I thought I was better prepared for receiving feedback from my beta readers than I was in 2021 when I had written my first novel (that never got past the beta stage). I thought that knowing what questions to ask and looking at it as “this person wants to make the book the best it can be” instead of “they are telling me how I am lacking in some way” would prevent the anxiety spiral I’d previously experienced.
When I tell people about giving up on my last book after getting feedback, most people try to tell me that it is somehow the beta reader’s fault. But that is absolutely not true, I can assure you. My spiral has nothing to do with the actual feedback and everything to do with my personal anxious brain.
Allow me to explain a little. When I receive feedback that says, “Look at the story through the lens of your intended audience” my brain interprets that as “No one will want to read your book because you have no idea who your audience even is.” Not exactly what was meant. It was just reminding me that there may be elements of the story that need a little more explanation depending on who I expect to be reading it.
I’ve gotten feedback from two of my three beta readers so far. I asked each of them for their assistance because I knew they would be looking at it from different perspectives. One told me that she is definitely not my intended audience, and she had some confusion around the RPG portion of the story or what the characters were learning. Which should have told me that I need to do a better job with those portions if I am looking to attract readers that are looking for anxiety fiction. Instead, I interpreted it as “No one with anxiety would like my book and I’m an idiot for thinking they would.”
And that really is a problem. My audience is me. I’m a socially anxious gamer nerd that goes to church and is an LGBTQ ally. I’m reminded of the time that I saw a book at B&N called Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal. My immediate reaction was “That sounds like a very narrow demographic.” So maybe I need to call mine “RPG for socially anxious queer Christians or allies”? Maybe that would help target my audience?
Over the weekend I came very close to giving up on this story altogether. I told myself “Well, if I’m the audience and I don’t know of anyone else just like me, maybe I just end it here and not bother putting it out into the world.” I mean, yes, I still wrote the darn thing. But why put myself through all the other aspects of book publishing if no one is even going to read it?
When one of the beta readers asked me if I’d gotten her feedback I replied with “Yes. I’m processing.”
Which she saw right through. “Is that code for freaking out?”
“Maaaybe. But I’m trying not to.”
She tried on multiple occasions throughout the weekend to get me on the phone to talk me through it. To be fair, I really was busy. But I might have been avoiding thinking about it as well. Because my brain only focused on what I interpreted as negative. It didn’t remember any of the good things they had to say.
Sage also tried to get me to connect with her about how I was reacting, but I couldn’t. Finally, on Tuesday I sat down to journal. I wrote about all of the ways I felt my book was lacking an audience. I re-read the feedback. I read the positive multiple times, trying to convince myself that they were true. I hesitated to attend the Coaching Zoom for TEP3 because I knew that talking about it would make me cry. I showed up. And Sage pulled it all out of me. I cried. A lot. And she pointed out that it always goes back to fear.
So what am I afraid of? I’ve always been afraid of doing things “wrong.” Which is actually a major theme in my book, oddly enough. Or maybe it’s not odd, since the audience is me. I fear that I’m too unique to fit anywhere. I’m a unicorn. Or maybe some other mystical creature that no one wants to find?
Perhaps I’m a Chimera. A strange hybrid of creatures that symbolizes the impossible. It’s complexity and unnatural combination of elements is kind of accurate to how I feel much of the time. I say I want to be authentic, but when I’m a conglomeration of so many things, how do I achieve that? Where one part of me is accepted, the other parts might be rejected. And my story follows suit. Which may be why it feels so personal that I can’t figure out my genre or audience?
I’m doing better today. I am not giving up. I’ve written out some ideas for how I think I could incorporate the feedback I received and plan to reread the whole thing with that in mind. It just might take a little longer than I expected to get the revisions done so I can send it on to my editor. But that’s okay. And I’ll need to work on a book title and description that will help the right readers find my story. Maybe that will be two people, or none. And that’s okay too.
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