When you’re writing a novel, the idea of feedback can make your heart start thumping, and not in the good way. Maybe you’re worried feedback could destroy your motivation or crush your spirit to the point that you quit writing altogether. Maybe you’re embarrassed to show your writing to anyone else at the moment. Or maybe you think you’re not any good at writing, and you’re not in a hurry to have someone else confirm it.
But feedback is an essential part of publishing, right? Authors are always talking about alpha readers, beta readers, critique partners, and ARC readers. Not to mention hiring editors. It seems like everybody’s looking for all the feedback they can get.
And that’s true: feedback is a pretty important step in the publishing process. Even if you don’t get feedback before you publish, you’ll certainly get it after, once readers start leaving reviews.
But you don’t necessarily need feedback to improve your writing chops.
And this is especially true if you’re still a new author working on your first three or four books. A lot of improvement in your writing skills will come down to volume. The more novels you write, the better you will naturally get at writing. It’s automatic.
Just write more!
“Toni, that can’t be right,” I hear you saying. “If I just write more but I’m doing it wrong, won’t I just get better at…doing it wrong?”
Aha! Found the fellow “perfect practice makes perfect” person! (I had a teacher in middle school who gave that lecture constantly.)
And sure, you could develop a few not-so-great writing habits by writing a lot without outside feedback, but that’s far, far better than the usual outcome: being so unsure what to do that you never do it at all. Better to write and mess up than never write and never learn.
Why just writing (without any feedback) makes you a better writer:
Experimentation. As you keep writing, you’ll start to test out different author voices, word usages, story structures, outlining methods, etc. You’ll find what works better for you and what trips you up. For example: You may find a great outlining method that makes story structure click for you, and now you’re even faster at planning out plots. You don’t need outside feedback for that.
Acclimation. When you’re first starting out as an author, there’s a pretty gigantic gap between the story as it plays out in your mind and what actually ends up on the page. More of a gaping chasm than a gap. But if you keep writing more and more, the gap between brain-story and page-story starts to close up. While I’d say hardly any author can make a story come out perfectly like it was in their brain on a regular basis, it’ll start to happen for you sometimes. So even though feedback can help you get one particular book closer to what you imagined, just writing more will help you acclimate to the process so that all your books will be that little bit closer.
Confidence. Writing more boosts your confidence, and confidence means better writing. Once you finish your first novel, you know you can finish another. The same goes for other skills, like writing multiple points of view or building an entire new world. Positive feedback can pump up your confidence, too, sure, but no feedback can ever measure up to that quiet inner knowing that you can do something.
So yeah, just writing helps a LOT. Every book has something new to teach you, and if you keep challenging yourself to tackle new and different things (POVs, plot structures, character archetypes, etc.), you’ll keep learning more and more, no feedback needed.
**BUT!**
This is only true for your overall writing skills. “Just write more” is not usually the answer when it comes to a single novel. If you keep writing and rewriting the same novel over and over, you’ll probably see some improvement in your writing skills, but not nearly as much as you’d see if you started a new book.
So if you want to improve just one particular novel, but you’re stuck and don’t know what to do, then you’re gonna need some outside feedback, whether that’s from a critique partner, beta readers, or an editor. (Like me!)
And if you’re looking for other ways to improve your writing without feedback, try these:
Study writing craft (via books or lectures).
Actively consume lots of stories to internalize story elements.
Be a beta reader for other authors.
Surprised to hear all this coming from an editor?
Well, while I truly believe in the power of specific, relevant, and kind feedback coming from someone who truly has a chance of loving your book, I also believe in the power of just diving in and doing it. So whether you’re two novels in and starting to doubt yourself, in the middle of the first novel and feeling like it sucks, or trying to psych yourself up to get started, my advice is the same: keep at it!
**This blog post is an expanded version of an email that originally appeared in the Story Sanctum, the Edits by Toni email list, back in 2022. Want content like this directly in your inbox twice a month? Enter the Sanctum for pep talks, writing and revision tips, and fun anecdotes (that always tie back to writing, promise).
