- or How to Survive the Dreaded Author Feedback Paralysis
“You know that foreign correspondent's ruse: in the days when you had your profession on the passport, you put writer, and then when you were in some trouble spot, in order to conceal your identity, you simply changed the r in writer to an a and became a waiter. I always thought there was a great truth there. Writing is waiting.” Martin Amis
I am not a patient man. Ask anybody that knows me well. I have the compulsions of a child, addicted to the instantaneous. I’m frequently having to give things up because I’ve broken my love for them through dependency. Writing, therefore, is a patently stupid way to spend my time and I often flirt with the notion of abandoning written passions in favour of something more immediately gratifying, not to mention remuneratively rewarding. However, giving up the urge to write would be like trying to commit suicide by holding my breath; in theory it sounds possible, but in practice you simply gasp yourself alive after less than a minute and look ridiculous. Renouncing a second god at my age would be folly.
So I’m stuck with the waiting, as much a part of writing as cavities are to a sweet tooth or black lungs to smoking. My poison, my problem.
On top of various article pitches to newspapers and websites, I’m currently waiting on my agent’s opinion of my latest manuscript, a biennial paralysis of mind and soul that leaves me with an IQ of sixty-nine. It’s only been two weeks but I’m scarred by a certain publisher’s recent decision to leave me waiting fourteen months for feedback (brief and negative, as it turns out) not once but twice. That’s almost two and a half years of waiting to be rejected. This is not a game I enjoy playing.
Robert Gottlieb, the famous editor of Toni Morrison, le Carré, Joseph Heller, Michael Crichton, Doris Lessing and many others, writes:
“The first thing writers want - and this sounds so basic, but you’d be surprised by how unbasic it is in the publishing world - is a quick response. Once they’ve finished a new manuscript and put it in the mail, they exist in a state of suspended emotional and psychic animation until they hear from their editor, and it’s cruelty to animals to keep them waiting.”
A bit of a wait is never a bad thing. It creates a valuable distance between yourself and your work. After all, towards the end, you may be spending eight hours a day on it. A separation is wholesome and necessary. And yet to go from that all-encompassing, everyday intensity to nothing at all, is torture.
But there are ways to cope with all that waiting. The best strategy is to start something else. Not necessarily another novel - such a large task often feels onerous at this point; ‘beginning a book is unpleasant’ according to Philip Roth, and he’s not wrong - but maybe a short story or, as I’m currently doing, a few articles for online publication. Or even a blog post such as this one. Monetise your writing hustle, if you can. Keep notes about things that interest you. In time, they may grow wings. Build momentum for the next major project.
Don’t chase the agent, editor, beta reader, publisher. Not yet. Give it a month, six weeks at least. No one likes a stalker.
Don’t - and this is very important - revisit the work to re-convince yourself of its literary greatness. You gave it at least three drafts in the first place. You were ready to send it off (at least, you bloody well should have been). Let it lie. You will be looking at it with panicked, impatient eyes at this stage, trying to second-guess someone whose opinions you trust, and you’ll be tempted to snatch it back again to rework the odd line or three, thus extending your overall waiting time and resetting the clock for no reason. What with the painful wait times that exist in the industry as it is, why would you even consider doing this?
Read instead. Reading is exactly the same discipline as writing, so take the enforced holiday from your own work to see how others do it. It’s essential practice. I once attended a talk with Will Self where he announced he no longer read other people’s novels, that he had experienced enough fiction to fill a lifetime and didn’t need to see how it was done any more. I don’t know if this egregiously arrogant piece of advice was given to keep would-be-writers off the scent or if he was merely pulling our legs but I recognised it as wrong then and see it, now his literary star has undoubtedly faded, as doubly wrong today.
In summation, because everybody loves bullet points, here’s how to avoid tantrums and tears while waiting for that sweet, sweet criticism:
Start work on the next project or projects
Avoid hassling your reader - they’re busy too
Don’t revisit the work until you’ve had feedback
Read like a mad bastard possessed
Remember, right now, no one knows what’s happening in the publishing world. Back in April, when I started this modestly read blog, it was announced that there had been a surge in book sales during lockdown, but this was almost immediately tempered with noises about industry hibernation owing to bookshop closures (Amazon, obviously, continues to ride roughshod over all throughout the pandemic). I suspect that while some big name writers haven't been adversely affected, almost everyone else has, and the uncertainty over the possibility of future lockdowns is influencing publishers' decisions. Cinema has been destroyed, ditto the theatre. Hopefully a ghost of the publishing industry can continue. We'll see. But in the meantime, I can’t help but suspect those already unbearable waiting times may get even longer yet...
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