Happy October, the most glorious (or gore-ious) month of the year for horror fans! May your apple cider be chilled, your candy bowls stay filled, and your costumes be completed long before the eleventh hour. If you’re new here, warmest welcomes to you: Kindly help yourself to the cauldron of pumpkin soup in the corner—don’t skip the toppings bar!—and feel free to go bobbing for advice-apples in our archives as you make yourself at home.
One of the best and worst parts of a writer’s life is receiving feedback on our work. After eons spent alone hunched over our keyboards, here, finally, is the moment when we’ll find out how it reads to another human being. It’s exhilarating. It’s humbling.
And it’s downright terrifying.
So as wonderfully befitting this spooky-season newsletter, this month we’re going to face these fears. Don your ectoplasm shields and have your ghost traps at the ready: This month, we’re looking at how to receive and process constructive criticism of our work.
TEN BRAVE STEPS TOWARD NO-FEAR FEEDBACK
First: Do not read feedback until you are physically and mentally prepared to receive it.
Will the downfall of our society one day be linked to our inexplicable decision to have 24/7 access to email on our phones? Maybe! Should you still open that email containing feedback in the doctor’s waiting room, at the grocery check-out line, or while wrangling a live lobster through airport security? Absolutely the hell not! Do not let a tantalizing subject line lead you into temptation; instead, wait until you are in a quiet space with a clear head and an open heart. Removing any distractions and allowing yourself undivided focus and attention on the feedback is the best way to truly “hear” and absorb it.
It’s normal (and good) to feel things when you read feedback.
Reading criticism is going to make you feel a certain way, and that’s OK. It’s OK to feel pride at the good comments—your head will return to its normal size, I promise; this business has entirely too much rejection for this to be a lasting concern. It’s also normal for even the most nicely worded suggestions to sting a bit. Stinging just means you have skin in the game. Hurt is a symptom of care, and it’s a very good thing to care about your work.
But understand the comments are about your work.
A comment about your work is not a comment on you. It is a comment on how 26 letters of the English alphabet are arranged on a page. Yes, you spent a lot of time and effort arranging those letters, but those letters are not you. They are little symbols in a document, and they can always, always be arranged in a manner that is more effective or efficient. Handing those symbols to someone else to read is the only way to discover how they might be rearranged for the better. This is your work, this is your story, and you care very, very deeply about it...but it is not you. It can’t be.
Gauge your emotional temperature as you read criticism.
Touch your face. Is it warm? Your ears, are they burning? Your heart, is it racing? Does your collar suddenly seem too tight or too close to your skin? Note which comments specifically trigger a physical response in you and flag them accordingly. For better or for worse, something about this particular suggestion has gotten a physical rise in you and will likely need additional care and attention in revision—both in terms of resolving it in the work and being tremendously kind to yourself as you work out a solution.
My go-to suggestion for receiving feedback is this:
If a comment feels wrong, it probably is wrong.
If a comment feels uncomfortable, it’s probably right.
Don’t burn after reading. Do walk away after reading.
Tempting though it may be, I do not advise doing an immediate delete, a wastebasket crumple-and-ball, or a ceremonial burning with ritualistic chanting for even the harshest of feedback. Do yourself a favor and walk away. Distract yourself. Do something else that is not writing. Or get messy in a new project or revise an old one. Do not fester; do not obsess; do not read your draft for the zillionth time and bemoan your status as The Worst Writer To Ever Hold a Pen In the History of Pens. (Yes, I know who that is, and no, and it’s not you. I promise.) That comment burning a hole in your brain right now will probably not look quite so harsh in the clear light of the next morning. Besides, it’s never a good idea to leap into a draft and start making drastic changes willy-nilly; it’s much better to let them sit and percolate until we can work out a measured solution.
Not all comments need to receive the same weight.
A comment from a trusted reader and critiquer is worth its weight in gold. You don’t write for everyone; no one should. You write for an ideal reader, and comments from people who regularly read and work in your genre can thus rank more heavily in your revisions. (Comments from your mother, who thinks everything you write is the greatest work of genius since the panini press, should be cherished but perhaps not taken as gospel, for example.) When receiving suggestions from multiple people, some degree of feedback filtering will be essential for your sanity, especially when some comments inevitably contradict each other. Give yourself grace as you sort through the mixed messages; eventually, some comments will come into clearer focus as others fade more into the background.
Pay attention to the percentage of suggested changes that you make.
If you’ve received suggestions from several people—professionals, trusted readers in your genre, critique partners, etc.—and have taken 0% of them, you may need to take another look at your feedback reception. I do not know anyone who births narratives that are perfectly publishable the moment they exit our brains. If no suggestions for improvement ever feel helpful to you, I would gently suggest either soliciting feedback from different readers or taking a hard look at why you feel such resistance toward criticism.
But I would also raise a red flag if you regularly accept 100% of suggestions from a wide variety of readers. Because...
You can always, always push back on editorial suggestions.
Even if they come from your agent. Even if they come from your editor. Please, please, if you take away nothing else from this newsletter, remember this: It will be your name on the work. Your name in the byline, your name on the book spine. Not your editor’s. Not your agent’s. Yours. You are the one who will bear the lion’s share of praise or criticism when your work is published, so you are the one who has the final say in your work, always. No matter how aggressively feedback is phrased, you always have an option, you always have a voice, and you always can say no—even if that ultimately means seeking an alternate avenue for publication. Never, ever make a change that would make you feel uncomfortable to put your name on a work just to get it published.
That said…
Be prepared to offer alternate solutions or compromises.
Editors and agents want to work with authors with a strong point of view. They want clear authorial visions and voices. But that doesn’t mean they want to work in a dictatorship.
So let’s say you don’t want to take an editor/agent up on their suggestion to move chapter three later in a manuscript. That’s fine! Storming out of the room yelling “IT’S MY BOOK AND I’LL DO WHAT I WANT” isn’t. Instead, I’d suggest:
A.) Clarifying their reasoning behind suggesting the change. (Does it slow the pacing of the narrative? Is it a little boring or confusing? Is it too much for readers to take in at the beginning of a book?)
B.) Explaining your reasoning for resisting the change. (Perhaps you feel this subject material is essential to be presented near the beginning so you can expand upon it in chapters four, five, and six.)
C.) Presenting alternate solutions. (If chapter three slows the pacing of the narrative, maybe it can be whittled down; maybe more exciting elements later in the book can be bumped up into this chapter; maybe chapters one and two can be condensed, etc.)
Editors and agents don’t flag things in manuscripts without reason, and if they spot a problem, readers and reviewers often will, too. It’s always fine to say no! But in general, a “no, but...” is always more productive and professional than a hard “no, period.”
Lastly: Read the good parts twice.
Most of this advice has focused on weighing negative comments because those require the most action and attention on our part. But real harm is done by ignoring the positive and fixating only on the negative. Instead, follow legendary filmmaker John Waters’ lead, who frequently advises creatives to shun the advice that cautions creatives not to read reviews of their work: “Read the bad ones once, the good ones twice, and put them all away and never look at them again,” he told LitHub’s Maris Kreizman in 2019.
Critique writers are often advised to deliver negative feedback in a “compliment sandwich,” layering negative comments between two positive ones like bookending spoonfuls of sugar that help the medicine go down. But precious few people eat sandwiches for the bread, you know? It’s easy to skim past the good parts in search of the “meat” of the criticism…but we shouldn’t. We need praise to keep us going; we also need to know what’s working so we know what not to cut.
And if nothing else, we should respect the effort of the person writing the feedback. They’ve spent a considerable amount of their precious time, energy, and attention to consider our work and spell out this feedback for us; we do them a great disservice by skimming past the kind words they’ve worked hard to craft.
And at the end of the day, this industry is too damn rife with rejection not to hold someone’s praise close to our chests, you know? Let’s allow ourselves little revels wherever we can find them.
Until next month—
Keep writing,
Nicki
AND NOW: A BRIEF HOUSEKEEPING NOTE FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT KEEP WRITING
Next month’s newsletter will look a little different: In lieu of our typical essay, we’ll have a very long list of calls for submission for November, December, and early 2024 to tide you over while I am away from my newsletterly desk on maternity leave. When I return depends on when Keep Writing’s newest, tiniest scribe decides to arrive, but I promise I will include as many future listings as I can find before sinking into the sea of newborn-induced sleep deprivation.
November 2023 calls for submissions
As always, a few listings from last month’s newsletter remain open for the procrastinators!
This month’s listings in brief
Spotlight: Sand Hills: “Fantastic, unusual, & macabre” submissions
New American Press: Themed short fiction, creative nonfiction, and micro-chapbooks
Scarlet Tanager Books: Poems on the environmental impacts of war
Exsolutas Press: Poetry, fiction, and nonfiction submissions for Thriving: An Anthology
Spotlight Pick
Sand Hills: “Fantastic, unusual, & macabre” submissions
Sand Hills, Augusta University’s literary magazine since 1973, welcomes the “speculative, thrilling, eerie, gothic, supernatural, or anything in between” for a special online fall issue. Send up to three single-spaced poems (max: 35 lines each) or one double-spaced short story or essay (max: 2,000 words).
Deadline: Nov. 7
Other Listings
Charlotte Lit Press Lit/South Awards: Writers from North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia
Current and past residents of North Carolina as well as its border states are welcome to enter this collection of contests from Charlotte Lit Press. Winners in each category (fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry) will receive $1,000; an additional pool of $3,000 will be shared by the remaining finalists. All finalists, semi-finalists, and winners will be published in the upcoming spring issue of Litmosphere: Journal of Charlotte Lit. For poetry: Send one to three poems, up to five pages; Jericho Brown will judge. For creative nonfiction: Send up to 4,000 words; Maggie Smith will judge. For fiction: Send up to 4,000 words; Clyde Edgerton will judge. Entry fee for all contests: $10, but waived for anyone with a financial need (email to request a waiver). Winners will be announced on March 1.
Deadline: November 1
Interim: “When the Atoms Reassemble” nonfiction
“Ours is a time of atomization and peripheral living. Societal pillars like education, marriage, parenthood, the nuclear family, organized religion, media and political affiliation do not mean what they did even a decade ago,” write Interim’s editors. “Interim seeks creative nonfiction that measures individual experience against these shifting frameworks. How are our communities changing and why? How can we cope with such shifts? Which aspects of contemporary life should we resist or reinvent? Which should we seek to preserve? Where can we find meaning in an ever-shifting world? Is our capacity for hope enough to carry us? Most importantly, how can we reassemble?” Send nonfiction (memoir, essay, literary journalism, hybrid forms, etc.) between 2,000 and 5,000 words in MLA format. (Note that the deadline written in the call description lists the deadline as Sept. 1, but the call is still open and the actual deadline in both Submittable and Interim’s CLMP posting is set as Nov. 1, so that’s the deadline I’ve gone with here.)
Deadline: November 1
New American Press: Themed short fiction, creative nonfiction, and micro-chapbooks
For its 2023 MAYDAY series of contests, New American Press seeks submissions relating to each contest’s theme. The grand prize in each category is $500, with $250 for second place, $100 for third, and $150 “in swag” for honorable mentions. For fiction: Send work (up to 1,500 words) that relates to the theme “endings;” Alissa Hattman will judge. For creative nonfiction: Send work (up to 5,000 words) that relates to the theme “Changing My Mind;” the press’ editors will judge. For poetry: Send eight to 12 pages of poetry to accompany the “micro-chapbook” contest theme; Sophia Terazawa will judge. Entry fee for all contests: $20.
Deadline: Nov 1
Speckled Trout Review: Poems “For the Ages”
Send up to four poems that respond to Speckled Trout Review’s chosen theme of “For the Ages,” which editors say “suggests a strange, extraordinary, fantastical, or confounding event, situation, or tale that astounds and leaves us amazed.” No submission fees; email poems in the body of an email with no attachments. No “overtly political” themes.
Deadline: Nov. 5 “or until filled”
The Fabulist: Fantastical & speculative flash fiction
Send fantastical flash up to 1,000 words to The Fabulist for their new flash fiction project, The Fabulist Flash. Payment is $100, and editors note that “going above the word count is fine if you need a little headroom to take the story home, but it’s in your interest to keep it tight, as the flat fee is firm.”
Deadline: Nov. 12 (but submissions do not open until Nov. 6)
Scarlet Tanager Books: Poems on the environmental impacts of war
Send poems to Scarlet Tanager Books for consideration in an upcoming anthology, Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War. “Although impacts of war on the environment have occurred throughout history, people—particularly eco-minded people—are becoming increasingly aware of how war affects the non-human world, as well as the air we all breathe and the water that sustains all life,” editors say. “Our intent in this anthology is not to minimize the human toll of war, but to expand the dialogue.” All anthology profits will be donated to “organizations that help refugees of war or support environmental restoration following war.”
Deadline: Nov. 15
Exsolutas Press: Poetry, fiction, and nonfiction submissions for Thriving: An Anthology
This forthcoming anthology will focus on the state of thriving “in all its glory and forms, often in the aftermath of grave challenges.” Send poetry, short prose, fiction, or creative nonfiction. Contributors will receive an honorarium of $10.
Deadline: Nov. 16