Here’s how last year’s Gypsy Cob Music Festival should have gone. Lenora “Lenny” Ragno was supposed to rock her duet with her long-time crush, Jeb, during the open-mic competition. Then, swept up in the glow of success, he’d finally kiss her. Instead, Lenny choked on stage and spent the whole year dodging him online. And avoiding playing her fiddle in public. She thought her worst nightmare was behind her, but she was way wrong.

She’s back at Gypsy Cob where avoiding a public performance is about as impossible as hiding from Jeb. She thinks facing him will be the scariest part of the festival, but when one of their friends talks everyone into trying astral projection, Lenny catches the eye of a demonic entity that marks her as its own.
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Now, whenever it wants, the demon can pluck Lenny from her reality and transport her to a hellish between-world, haunted by its countless, gruesome victims. If she doesn’t want to become one of them, she must discover the nature of the demon’s hold on her and remove it. But how can she defeat a literal demon when she can’t even get over her personal ones?

Once again, I'm excited that "Judging More than Just the Cover," is hosting this month's "It's a Writer Thing" post. Amber Gregg's blog is a rich and informative resource for writers, plus a lot of fun! ​

Anyone notice all those pitch contests taking over Twitter lately (”Pitch Madness”, “Pitch to Publication,” etc.)? They’re hard to miss, and who would want to miss them? They serve as awesome opportunities for authors to advance their careers, plus they’re super fun. In contests like these, little hints of feedback are tweeted as the agent or editor reads the submissions, and these little hints can be very helpful. Plenty of authors stalk the #pitchmadness, #p2p16, and #tenqueries feeds for gems that can enhance their work. And now that I’m in the “Pitch to Publication” contest, feedback is on my mind more than ever. 

Receiving feedback is an essential part of being a writer, but it’s not necessarily the easiest or the most intuitive thing to learn. How did this inspire today’s blog post? There are way too many things that can knock a writer off the path. The only way to succeed is to keep going, to practice our skills, to put ourselves out there, and feedback has the power to usher us along or to put an avalanche in our road. In the hopes this will be helpful for other writers, whether newbies like me or long-time veterans, today’s article is the first It’s a Writer Thing post in a series that I hope will be a sort-of primer for receiving feedback, to help others get the most of out of it and to hopefully avoid the unintended pitfalls.

First, a little background on me. I wasn’t a literature/writing major in college. I jumped into this writing stuff just because I had a pull to do it. In other words, I started off with absolutely no idea what I was doing. I’ve been writing for five years, but I still have to ask friends what stuff means and without Google I’d be lost. The reason I share this is because for new writers, especially folks like me who are brand new to the entire scene, receiving feedback in those early days can feel very much like trial by fire.

I, personally, wasn’t ready for the kind of feedback I got at first. The problem was, I had no idea what kind of feedback I wanted or needed. It took time and reflection to understand what I was looking for back then. Unfortunately, what I was looking for and what I got didn’t match up. At all.
Let’s start with the givens.

Remember geometry class (I know you don’t want to, but it won’t be too bad, I promise)? The teacher started off each problem with some givens, the rules you could use to structure you efforts and eventually arrive at your desired solution. So, for today’s post, I’d like to focus on the givens of receiving feedback.

​3. We’ll be happy later. 
Though it’s not true that all critiques are worth implementing (more on that later), many are. Plenty of examples have been shared out there on the internet, and there’s not a single one where the author said: “Yeah, my CP came up with some important points that made my book way better, but you know, I really regret making those changes now. Dang him.” Facing and implementing feedback is a goal like any other, just part of prepping an MS; any time we reach a goal, we need to give ourselves a little pat on the back for growth we’ve accomplished. Same with facing those edits that just showed up in our inbox.

In upcoming posts in this series, I’ll discuss types of feedback, the many faces of critique partners, my basic process of dealing with feedback, and some tips for evaluating the merit of the input you’ve been given.
Until then, You can do it. You can write!