The Effects of Feedback

One way or another, I haven't had the largest amount of feedback on my work. I've had plenty of rejections, but barely any of them have given me any substantial advice about how to improve my writing. This is due to the sheer volume of submissions received by agents these days being too large to give individual feedback unless it's accepted.

My first genuine feedback was several years ago from the novelist Francis Hardinge. She was an acquaintance of my sister Elinor, and I'd been introduced to her to help polish my writing. This was when I was in my mid teens, and very very green. She gave me some important pointers about word usage, and made me more conscious of homonyms, and their terrible and comedic effect on prose. I'll always remember my giggles when I realised the impact of my use of the words "past" and "passed". I've been very conscious of that ever since.

My second example is from a query response for an adventure novel I wrote around two years ago. It was my first attempt at both a first-person narrative and a novel with no fantastical elements. Everything was either grounded in real history or plausible in its execution and evolution. The agent wasn't interested in actually taking it on, but did tell me that while intriguing it had some issues with wordage and pacing. They also felt the novel was too personal. The latter point was valid, but that's how I wrote the book. I wanted my heroine to break the fourth wall and speak directly to the reader as if she were in the room with them. But it was a valid point.

My next piece of feedback is the most recent. It was for a science fiction novel, and I'd sent off the first ten pages. The agent replied with a rejection, but she offered me a considerable amount of feedback. She called my writing "clear and crisp" and praised the overall setting, but found my opening info dump distracting and the story too complex. She has a point. I wrote the story to be quite complicated, which can be rectified somewhat without destroying the product. And her words about the intro are well founded. I was able to make some constructive edits to the manuscript, and other WIPs I'm writing at the moment, and I didn't feel like I was betraying my work. Rather, I thought it was being improved by the more natural and taut flow.

I've even got some beta readers for my latest WIP, as my use of comedy is reliant on a fusion of often-incompatible cultures, and I didn't want it to be as unfunny as most comedy films seem to be these days.

All of this proves something. No matter how experienced I think I am, I'm still learning., This feedback is an obvious example, but I'm also learning for myself through the gradual process of writing, reading, submitting, learning, and writing again. An eternal spiral, which helps improve my skills. And one day, hopefully, it'll all pay off.