How to Handle Feedback

Writers, by their very nature, will have to face feedback during their lives. Whether it is asked for (critique partners) or given without your request (reviews on say, Amazon), there will be positive feedback and negative feedback.

Each writer has (hopefully) heard that if you want to be a writer, you need to be able to take rejection and by implication, negative feedback. Lots of people would probably say that they can take it, but it is naturally ingrained in each human being to focus more on the negative than the positive. In an article on Psychology Today, Karen Wright writes (no pun intended) that John Cacioppo, a neuroscientist, found that there is stronger brain activity in response to negative stimuli than positive stimuli.

In the same article, Wright mentions that it is harder to accept feedback from a peer or someone lower than you (interestingly enough, this includes positive feedback). It is because of this that step-parents struggle to control their step-children – the kids don’t recognise their authority.

Here are some things to keep in mind when getting feedback:

-Don’t ask people to critique your work if you feel they don’t have authority to give you advice.

-Know that the more narcissistic or insecure you are, the more the criticism will hurt.

-In the case of critique partner or beta reader, remember that you are the one who asked for feedback.

-When you get negative feedback, don’t immediately include or dismiss it. Allow yourself to come out of your fight-or-flight mode and then look objectively at it.

Perhaps a most important point here is remembering that not everyone will like your story. This is nicely put on Simon C. Larter’s blog.

Feedback is a necessary step in writing that lets us see how others perceive our work. Handle your critique partners and beta readers in such a way that they will give truthful feedback and in that way help you with your story.

How do you handle getting feedback? How do you handle GIVING feedback?

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Places that Inspire : Attic

Inspiration comes from everywhere, so for this week’s post (and probably the rest, except if something specific catches my attention) I’ll look at an ordinary place and how to draw inspiration from it.

An attic, for those who don’t know, is a space that fits between a slanted roof and the ceiling of a building’s top floor. This prevents, I imagine, awkward-looking top floor ceilings. Ergo, attics are generally weirdly shaped and are probably filled with rafters and the like. They are also generally hard to get to and hard to manoeuvre in. Most people use them for storage, though some convert them into bedrooms or studies.

There are two things that caught my attention from that and which I will try to expand on.

1) Attics are hard to get to (and subsequently not visited often).

2) Attics are used for storage.

For 1, I can deduce that if it is not visited often, it would be a good place to hide. Plus, if I take into account that people convert it into rooms, it translates into a room that was made where someone who does not want to be found can go. Since I’m a sucker for the supernatural, I immediately think of a not-entirely-human man hiding in the room to avoid getting torch-and-pitchforked. Or, maybe he’s trying to stay in. But if he was, say, a werewolf, the room would have to be heavily fortified, or he’d just bring the whole roof down. That’s a beginning.

Number 2 tells me that there is probably a lot of old things in attics. Again with the supernatural, it could be VERY old things. As in ancient times when people still used magic and so on. Old things implies old people or the handing down of items. Let’s say there is an old man who was guarding some sort of artefact from the old days. Before he could pass the responsibility on to his son, he dies of a heart attack.

The son goes up to the attic to clear it out in preparation for the sale of the house, but then he finds the artefact and activates it, inadvertently destroying the world/transporting him somewhere else/anything else that could go wrong.

I hope this gives you an idea of the thought process I go through to come up with a story.

What ideas can you come up with about attics?

Herewith is my attempt at flash fiction based on idea number one (feel free to leave a piece of flash fiction based on an attic – 200 words or less in this case – of your own in the comments):

Henry climbed the ladder that led to the great metal hatch on his ceiling. He typed in the code that released the lock on the keypad next to it. Another box was attached to the ceiling with a green light shining in a corner. He typed on the pad, inputting 12 hours as the time. The light turned red and Henry opened the hatch.

A single lamp hung high in the rafters and a thin light was cast in from outside the window. He climbed inside and closed the hatch behind him. There was a loud click. The lock was active.

The entire room - except for the reinforced window - was metal. Five inches thick. Even so, there were huge dents and long gashes everywhere.

Henry went to sit in the middle of the room, facing the window. After an hour, he felt his skin tingle and his bones shift. It would be eleven hours before the hatch opened again.

The full moon came out from behind the trees.

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Writing on the Last Day

This morning, I read a post on Jennifer Hubbard’s blog. It was an interview with Shaun David Hutchinson about his book, The Deathday Letter, where people get a letter 24 hours before their demise, informing them of the coming end. The book is about what 15 year old Oliver does with his last day when he receives notice. I haven’t actually read the book, so I have no idea what Oliver does. However, it got me thinking, what would I do on my last day?

Isaac Asimov said the following: "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."

I think it is obvious what he would have done if he got a Deathday letter.

Can you say the same as this author (and probably many more)? Would you write if you got your Deathday Letter?

I have no idea what I’d do with my last day. But I can tell you this: I hope that I can write to the end*. Chances are that if I got my Deathday Letter today, writing would be the last thing on my mind. But it is a goal that I hope to reach. To grow as a writer and get to know the craft until it is like breathing. Until I cannot stop myself from writing.

What would you do on you last day? Is writing your favourite pastime? Do you have a message you want to deliver to the world?

Age old advice, “Live each day like it’s your last.” If you have a story you want to get into the world, don’t wait. Craft and craft until it is perfect. Don’t wait for better days. They might just never come.

* Okay, I’d probably like to say goodbye to everyone I care about and all that, but I communicate better by writing than talking anyway.

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