ISWG: Submission Anxiety, Mushy Brain, & Reading Reviews

Founder: Alex J. Cavanaugh

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. {This has been taken from the IWSG site, where a full list of participants can be found}


Beth: Being on sub has a tendency to beat even the most positive person down. I’m trying incredibly hard to overcome the disappointment each time an editor passes on my manuscript. I try to plow through with current works despite going on multiple rounds of sub with a finished project my agent and I are passionate about. Lately, when I sit down to tackle some work on my WIP, I find that I just stare at the screen and worry: Am I good enough? What if my on-sub book amounts to nothing? What’s to say this new project won’t sell? All these what-ifs are detrimental to my writing and my psyche. And the worst part is that with all the time spent worrying and trying to predict a future that may or may not come, I could have written twelve novels! (Don’t worry—I’m writing through the insecurities! I hit 60,000 words this month on my WIP! Now to make them make sense…)


Kimberly: Grunge Gods and Graveyards has been out in the wild for six months and sales are down to a trickle. You'd think that would make me all insecure, but honestly I was prepared for this. What I'm struggling with is trying to finish my other writing projects. After my third child was born in May, my ability to sit and focus is also down to a trickle. I can't seem to get anything done. It's taken me a few months to draft a 30K-word novella. I'm still drafting a YA ghost story mystery after an entire year. I started an outline for a historical mystery that may not get drafted for another year. And I have a great idea for a series I want to get moving on. That's the thing: I have all these ideas but my ability to work consistently has stalled. Because I have three kids and my brain is mush. By the time the kids are in bed, I'm useless and only interested in browsing Etsy. It's my own damn fault. I'm well aware of it and yet...I'm just so tired. But if I want to be a writer, I have to write. Obviously.


Carrie: Before publishing my first novel, I spent 17 years in corporate industry. One of the primary beliefs at our company was the importance of customer feedback. It was viewed as critical information that helped us improve our products and service. Customer feedback was also a critical element in the performance review process. Basically, I’m programmed to care about what people think.

I’ve read several posts/articles that recommend writers NOT read reviews from readers. Well, it’s a little hard for me to reverse 17 years of programming. So yes, I read reviews. And let me tell you, it makes things very difficult.

One of my primary insecurities in general is the feeling of not being good enough. In the corporate world, I could usually tell what kind of performance feedback I was going to receive. I mean, I worked closely with the people over the year and it was easy to know which were satisfied with my performance and which felt I needed some improvement. Customer feedback on a process for which I was responsible wasn’t personal, so it was easy to absorb.

Book reviews are very personal. It’s all me in the words between the covers. It’s hard to detach myself from the comments and look at them objectively. If someone doesn’t like one of my novels, I feel as if I’ve let them down. They took a chance with my book, in some cases paid money, and in all cases invested part of their valuable personal time. I want to respect that and give them an entertaining story to enjoy.

I’ve been genuinely surprised by the positive feedback I’ve received on my first novel, Kingston’s Project. Not because I don’t think that my book is good, but because the feedback has been so consistent. I had expected to have a few more people who didn’t like it by now. I know not everyone will like every book—it’s just not possible. It’s been so rewarding to see the positive response to this novel. So where’s the insecurity coming from?

Well, that would be on my second novel, Kingston’s Promise, which is the sequel to the first. So far, the feedback has reached both ends of the spectrum. I’ve had some readers tell me that they loved the sequel more than the first. On the flip side, some readers who had loved and raved about the first book expressed their disappointment in the second. The feedback is not consistent and that has been difficult for me.

I know all the logic that says poor reviews are OK and might actually be a good thing, but the heart is having a hard time. It’s taken a lot of effort to ignore my 17 years of training that’s telling me the feedback means I need to change something. I had to stop writing my third novel for a bit, just so I could recalibrate my emotions. I didn’t want it to affect what I was writing or how I was writing it. As I said, in the corporate world feedback is used to make changes! I’m continuously fighting to pull myself back to the logical side of the equation, as well as focus on the positive comments. Since I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop reading reviews, I’m hoping to figure out a way to take the personal emotions out of it. I’d like to be able to use reader reviews to see if there is genuine criticism I can use to improve my writing, but I don’t want to let it completely change what and how I write—or worse, stop me from writing all together.

If anyone has a quick and effective way to reprogram 17 years of learning, please let me know!