Have you ever poured your heart into a story, struggled with every detail to get it just right, spent hours perfecting it, and then... were unable to find someone to read it?
I have.
Oh, I have my sisters, and they let me read them what I write but there is always this nagging in the back of my mind that says, they say it's good because you're their sister. I know they feel that too and it doesn't help that the three of us are horrible at verbal communication. We can't seem to say what we're feeling, but somehow we can write it down, sometimes.
What I'm saying here is that I know a lot of us probably feel this way. Oh, my brother read this and said it was good, but did he just say that because he's my brother? Dad said great job, is that just dad saying great job or did he actually mean great job?
Even friends can be lumped into this category where we're not sure they're telling us the truth about what we wrote. Maybe it's horrible and they don't want to hurt our feelings? Maybe it could use some work but they don't want to say anything.
You could continually go in circles with this line of thought.
I know.
I've done it.
So, how do we fix it? How do we get the honest feedback we want? Well, I think for the most part my sisters tell me the truth. They really do think it's great, we've worked on tearing down the 'save her feelings wall' if you know what I mean. Truth can be brutal sometimes and that's why my sisters and I always follow criticism with praise, it makes the criticism easier to take.
I'm pouring out a lot here, I'm not sure if I'm going anywhere though, hopefully, this makes sense. Family and friends are great places to start our books out. You know let family and friends read over and tell us they like it because unless that 'don't hurt their feelings wall' had been torn down that's all your gonna get. They don't want to hurt you in any way, so they're not going to critic you unless you ask them point-blank to do so. I have two friends that will give me honest-to-goodness feedback and it's because we've torn down that wall and are mutually helping each other. (Hey Abbi Hey Saraina!)
But each of us comes to the same conclusion, even if your family and friends are different than mine, (which I can't get anyone but my sisters to read anything right now so your family is probably different than my family...lol...) they love us so maybe they aren't telling the whole truth? That's a doubt that is always going to be present when letting people you love and who love you read a book. Maybe some of you don't struggle with this and if that's true then I'm glad!
But for those of us who do struggle with this nagging doubt, welcome to Writers' Vision!
And if you don't struggle with it and just want outside opinions, welcome to Writers' Vision!
Writers' Vision is an honest feedback system, you give honest feedback and you receive honest feedback. It's about helping each other not coddling each other. We truly want you to present the best manuscript possible to the world. Because that's what we ourselves want! All of us want to put our best foot forward, so we are giving each other the advice and feedback we would want to receive. We're all writers and we all want one thing...
Our finished book to be the best it could possibly be! For it to be how we envisioned it could be! We want it to be our Writers' Vision!
So, no matter where you are in your writing journey know we're here for you! Here to help you accomplish your dream with the best possible manuscript in your hands.
Never stop writing, never give up, and remember your Writers' Vision is just around the corner!
God Bless everyone!
Kaytlin Phillips