Taking the Plunge

I confided in my friends that I was writing a novel, and thankfully they didn’t laugh in my face. They gave me the confidence to put my head down and keep working on my first draft. After 8 more months of going it alone, I was ready for feedback. I wasn’t done. In my head, the story was only two-thirds complete. But I’d self-imposed a somewhat arbitrary deadline and I delivered what I had. 

July 2018

The day arrived. After laboring over a Google doc for months, I made a unique copy for each of my volunteers and hit ‘share.’ Then, immediately I took a week-long vacation at a lake house with many of those same friends. I knew opening myself up to criticism was going to be tough, but I didn’t realize just how vulnerable it would leave me. I learned a lot about beta reading and myself in those following weeks. 

• Not everyone has the time or patience to be a beta reader. This isn’t a knock on any of my wonderful volunteers! We were all busy adults and not everyone had time to slog through 90,000 often-meandering words, only to reach an unfinished ending.
• Not everyone has the temperament to be a beta reader. Some of the feedback I received was hard to swallow—the intent wasn’t mean-spirited, but the words read as ‘mean.’ There’s an art to interpreting immature work and providing feedback that is both honest and actionable. The editors I’ve worked with have been incredibly good here!
• Not everyone has the temperament to receive critical feedback. This one is on me. When the suggestions for improvement started rolling in, my first instinct was defensiveness. It’s easy in hindsight to acknowledge how rough that first draft truly was, but at the time, I thought it was incredible. I needed to leave my ego at the door and trust in my readers.

I didn’t expect to get any feedback during our vacation, but my friend Brad printed out his copy and worked on it throughout the week. Sometimes, I’d wander by, and he’d be reading, sometimes marking in the margins with a red pen… It was agonizing. I felt so exposed. My heart, soul, and over a year of my time were in those pages.

I dreaded what he might note or criticize. The silence was killing me. It was so bad that I couldn’t stay in the same room with him while he read. I needed a distraction. I got trashed and jumped in the lake. That got me through that first day. 

What I’ve since come to terms with is that the process of getting published is dominated by scrutiny and review. Well-curated beta readers are the friendliest possible audience. Editors are paid to be honest. Agents reject 99% of what they get. Even agented, there’s no guarantee a publisher will move forward with a manuscript. 

Brad read like a man possessed, and after a few days, he’d finished all 90,000 words and had a lot to say. A lot good. Some bad. Most importantly, he wanted more. What happens next? He peppered me with questions, many of which I couldn’t answer at the time, because I still didn’t know the ending!

Challenges aside, it was ultimately a very rewarding experience that taught me a lot about myself and markedly improved my writing. A couple of my initial volunteers even signed up to beta read several more versions. Heroes, one and all.