Ego

So, I have this ego.

Which isn't always a good thing when you're a writer.

For all of the years that I've been writing, getting feedback has been the part that I hated the most. Which doesn't quite make sense because I literally want people to read my work.

A little backstory.

I'm on a journey to get my manuscript published, the first in what I plan to be a long line of published works in my writing career. After finishing several revisions and rewrites last year, I decided to pay beta readers to give me their feedback on it as people who didn't know me or my work.

My first beta (I guess, actually, alpha) reader is always my best friend. The manuscript only got to where it was because of her feedback, and it came a long way. She and another friend once took it upon themselves to give me the honest truth about another manuscript that I'd self-published, and it hurt. I wanted to just quit.

For as long as I can remember, constructive criticism about my writing has always been hard for me to accept. Rationally, I know that the people giving me the feedback just want to make the work (and me) the best that it can be, but some part of me just feels defeated when a multitude of flaws are pointed out. I knew that, if I couldn't take the criticism from people that genuinely loved me and wanted the best for me, then I wouldn't make it in the publishing world.

After a lot of work on myself, I decided to test my growth and progress toward getting my ego in check by hiring the aforementioned beta readers. One of them I'm honestly not sure if they read through thoroughly based on their feedback. The second was more detailed, providing me with a document with impressions, questions, and suggestions. But both of them told me that they enjoyed it and couldn't put it down.

After a few tweaks, I felt like I was ready to start querying - reaching out to agents to find someone to represent me so that I could get published. I researched how to write a query letter, how to keep track of queries sent out, and more. But after seven months, nothing was really happening. I was trying not to get discouraged since this was never guaranteed to be a quick process. I had two agents respond with more than a standard rejection, and they helped me to tighten up my query. But still, I only received rejections.

Then I had a conversation with my bestie, who has built herself a following on BookTok, and she suggested that I start building my social media presence so that there will be people excited to read my book when it finally gets published. In addition to that, she also suggested thinking about self-publishing. Self-publishing has become much more mainstream, and could also possibly lead to publishers wanting to work with me. So I decided that was my next step.

A month in and I'm making friends on the app and getting to share in other writers' joys and struggles, and learning from them. I had two people offer to be beta readers for me, one in exchange for beta reading for her, and the other just because she was excited to read.

Imagine my surprise when both gave nearly identical feedback about the first chapter - there were too many characters introduced, and they couldn't tell who was the main character.

There was that ego again.

I didn't answer either of them immediately, since my ego immediately was wounded and I wanted to defend my work, but I realized that those were knee-jerk reactions that wouldn't get me anywhere.

As I thought about their feedback in relation to my manuscript, it dawned on me that this was likely the reason that no agents had wanted to represent me; after all, the first ten pages (or first chapter, in my case), was the sample that many agents asked for to see my writing. If my two beta readers saw all of those flaws that quickly, then it is likely that agents saw the same issues.

After all of this reflection, I took their feedback and put it into a document that I'll use when I go back to do revisions.

Now, I'm not going to say that I've completely beaten down my ego - I don't know that it will ever fully go away, and that might not be such a bad thing - but I'm learning to see the value in the criticism and the potential improvements that it can help me make.

In addition, both betas also had positive things to say, just as my bestie always does. So I know that I shouldn't give up and that there is hope. I'm excited about what comes next. Growth never stops, right?