I don’t even have all the feedback yet.
Just little tidbits. A few comments dropped casually over WhatsApp on the opening pages. A clarification here. A question there. A pause. A “Wait, what did you mean by…?”
Enough to confirm a few things I was already side-eyeing, eye-rolling, and unhinged staring.
Enough to make me feel a new kind of fear I didn’t even know about.
Last week I wrote about sending my paper-baby, virgin novel, Forget The Fairytale, to my beta readers. Letting go. Resisting the urge to tweak my work to death, even though I didn’t have one more logical thing to give it. Giving it to other, yet trusted people and stepping back for the first time in a long time.
Though it felt like dropping my toddler-aged child out in the cold, slap-bang in the middle of a bustling airport runway, and waltzing off to some dive-bar happy hour. A mega loss of control.
But this — avoiding the feedback I know I need — is different.
Big-Age Nerves, Activated
When one of my beta readers, a friend no less, sent me a voice recording, I was literally terrified to listen to it. Bracing myself for all the wrongs.
And to be clear: No way was I expecting to hear,
“Oh my God, this is the best thing I have ever read in my entire life, and will ever read again.”
Err, yeah. No. This isn’t comedy hour, and I’m not punking myself. I’m here for brutal honesty, not a standing ovation.
But I was also clenching butt cheeks for something like:
“How exactly did you pass Uni? Do you know what words are? How dare you send this to me!”
Funny thing is: I was the one who asked for feedback too early. The one who didn’t need all the details, because they were nowhere near finished. But I just needed to hear anything but silence. Or confirm that they hadn’t tossed my writing into the nearest body of water or set it ablaze, and didn’t have the heart to tell me yet.
Bad feedback this soon would feel worse than getting the full rundown at the end.
But it isn’t piss-poor and evil-to-the-core feedback.
- It’s critique, and exactly what I asked for.
- It’s not a slap in the face and a laugh behind your back.
- It’s revealing what’s not clear and where you went wrong — and how to fix it.
Like missing some more robust character descriptions—ones I swore up and down I’d already overdone and responsibly scaled back before hitting compile. Should’ve left them as is. Doh!
Or the über-obvious spelling mistakes my writing tool somehow missed, but the second I accidentally dumped the whole thing into Google Docs—boom. A bloody language crime scene.
Which pissed me off to no end, because that level of error should’ve been caught a long time ago. Double-bollocks-doh.
MM and KWL, you’re the real ones for reading through that. Love ya!
All (or most) fixed before my sis and SR got their copy—otherwise my sister would’ve booked a flight just to kick me in the tits over this level of spelling buffoonery.
And this is the part that hits differently:
When solid feedback starts to exist…
you realize how easy it is to avoid what you already know.
Avoidance doesn’t always come from fear of the unknown.
Sometimes it’s the thing that’s been there all along.
Maybe you didn’t know how to address it.
Or you did — and you just danced around it, pretending it wasn’t real.
When you’re feeling bolder, it looks like “trusting your instincts.”
When you’re not, it becomes, “I’ll deal with it once everything’s in.”
I’ve only received a sprinkle of feedback at this stage. My beta readers have full lives, and my book is not the priority in their week, so I’m patient. I’m grateful.
So far, nothing I’ve heard has been as harsh as my brain made it out to be.
My beta-reader babes haven’t blocked me.
My sister still publicly acknowledges me as family… so far.
There’s been no dramatic takedowns. No ego-shattering declarations.
Just thoughtful points.
And some big Oprah-Ah-ha moments.
Like when they say,
“I like it so far — I’ve only gotten to chapter X…”
And then confirm that the characters they’re supposed to hate… they actually do. Woohoo!!
Big-Age sigh released… so far.
But here’s the part no one talks enough about: The waiting.
Before the answers are final.
When you’re still technically allowed to pretend you don’t know what’s coming.
Before the thumbs up, down, or sideways is delivered via text, voice note, or in person.
I’ve watched real authors talk about sending books off to copy editors —
but none of them seemed as internally stressed as I am.
Or maybe they’re just hiding it better for their post.
But it is pee-in-ya-pants type nerve-wracking.
And it’s a pattern I see in other areas of life too:
- Not opening the email right away.
- Letting a hard conversation sit and sit and sit.
- Calling your discomfort “intuition” when you know good and well it’s hesitation in a better outfit.
Like how my mum would refer to pigeons as “just rats with wings carrying disease.”
On a school trip to Trafalgar Square, I remember her giving me ample change to buy pigeon feed. Not to feed the pigeons, like how everyone else was doing, but so I could throw the grain in one direction and run the other way. When I got home, I was damn near dragged into the shower and my school uniform was tossed, solo, into the washing machine at lightning speed.
She weren’t playing!
But at my Big Age, I know the difference and I’m really working on accepting it.
When Feedback Exists, Avoidance Gets Loud
Because instinct is calm.
Avoidance is noisy and nagging.
Instinct sets rules and boundaries.
Avoidance negotiates at a loss.
And the truth — the whole truth — is that my beta readers will certainly spot things I didn’t. Obvious and not so obvious. Or at least question it.
- They will clarify what doesn’t make sense.
- They will point out what needs to be removed.
- They will tell me where my cray-cray took a sharp left and I lost the plot. Literally.
But they won’t tell me anything I don’t already feel in my body when I reread certain pages.
They’re just naming it out loud.
Me thinking my sister will be the loudest. But I’m not putting money on it. Insert: sizeable nervous gulp.
I don’t have to agree with every note.
But I do have to listen — not just to them, but to my own reaction. Else I wasted their valuable time, expertise, and insights — and for what?
That’s the work.
Not just on the feedback itself, but what it surfaces.
So I’m sitting with it. All the feelings.
Because what else can I do right now?
With each day that passes and I hear nothing, I find other things to do to not spiral (too much).
Like work.
So I can pay bills and continue to live with heat, hot water, and food. You know, what this shitty-shitty-bang-bang economy has deemed ‘the luxuries.’
And accepting that this part of the process is not a race, I’m going to take a long pause before letting the full picture come into focus.
Before deciding what stays, what goes, and what needs more courage, oomph… or whatever.
Maybe that’s the real question — not just for writing, but for… everything.
