5 Thoughts For Writers On Feedback, Editing & Writing Speed

Regular readers will know that I’m a proponent of writing a lot, writing fast and structuring my writing business as a 21^st Century version of a pulp writer and publisher.

Today, I received feedback on yesterday’s post, and it’s caused me to step back and think about some elements of my approach. Namely, why put out stuff that’s imperfect? And, consequently, What do we do about feedback and editing with our approach?

The result is this article, where I’m going to outline exactly my process now and why I’m making the decisions I’m making.

#1: Heinlein’s Rules

I started as a freelance content writer. Along the way I became a highly-paid, expert direct response marketer. Throughout all this, I wrote fiction as a side hobby and to sharpen my skills. I’ve now entered the world of fiction-writing at a more professional level.

This provides the necessary backdrop for my approach. At all times, I’ve used the same approach that pulp writers used to back in the day, which basically amounts to a philosophy of putting words out there and getting paid for them. Or, as Heinlein set out in his five rules for writers;

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
4. You must put the work on the market.
5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

This is a heuristic I’ve always used. It doesn’t relate to speed, which we’ll discuss later, but process. It’s a great system that forces writers to overcome most of the blocks that writers face now; rewriting, writer’s block, unfinished projects and so forth.

However, there are a few things that you have to tweak to get them working correctly, simply to account for changes in the publishing landscape.

Firstly, “the market” now isn’t what it was in Heinlein’s day. Back then, as a writer you sold your work to publications, whether you were a non-fiction author, journalist, or fiction author. Now, “the market” is self-determined and far less permanent. We’ll get to that in the final section.

Also important is the caveat on rewriting “except to editorial order.” This does not refer to hiring an editor and doing what they tell you – which is for the most part a bad idea.

Instead, remember that in the Old World of Publishing, the editor was the gatekeeper to you getting your word in print. Ergo, the editor paid you.

Nowadays, the “editor” is the success of your work based on the goal you set for it. Which brings us to what we do about that…

#2: Feedback

In direct response, the only thing that matters is conversions. In some senses, publishing your own work is about far more than profit, and you can write books, articles and so on for various reasons.

However, maybe old habits die hard, but direct response provides a decent-enough model for how to deal with feedback. Namely, you take feedback of any kind, bake the problems that arise into your solution going forward, and test to see if whatever you do next works better.

And you always have a goal in mind for every piece of writing. This is the painful part for writers to come to terms with.

If you are writing a book because you want to make a living as a writer, then the book’s profits are the metric by which everything is judged.

If you are writing a blog post to get people to sign up for an email, then sign-ups are the metric by which you judge that.

It’s easy to say, “the audience is the gatekeeper now,” but that’s not true. The audience are the customer; the gatekeeper is your goal. Feedback in terms of the numbers is what you need to address.

Customer feedback is useful because it helps you to understand the task at hand; if you’re writing emails that nobody can read, the numbers will say “something is going wrong!” and the customer tells you how to fix it.

The hardest part of this process is taking your ego out of the equation and fixing the issue. Which moves us on to the next point.

#3: Editing

Heinlein’s Rules on editing are based on two things:

1. You have to let go of the critical, perfectionist voice that tells you that nothing is ready to go out into the world
2. You only edit when the gatekeeper forces your hand

For the former, the majority of writers don’t ever publish anything. Then, the majority of writers who publish something publish little of what they write; I don’t know a single writer, myself included, who doesn’t have far more unfinished drafts or abandoned projects than completed ones.

This, from the point of view of a pulp publisher, is wasted energy. So you have the simplified rules: write, finish what you write, and send it out.

We’re lucky in that the process is very easy; Hit send, hit publish, and the book is out there. There are no gatekeepers.

For the latter point, we’re both lucky and unlucky in the sense that we deal with the reality that the gatekeeper constantly evolves. Unlucky in the sense that you can drive yourself mad and fail at the first point if you allow yourself, lucky in that you can respond to feedback quickly and that makes your work better when needed.

For instance, I received the following feedback on yesterday’s blog post:

1. There were spelling/grammar errors.
2. The chain of thought was a bit loose at times
3. It was a bit “Dear Diary” at points
4. There was more “fluff” than “content”

To address these points; I can fix the spelling and grammar errors immediately. That’s not an issue and everyone will agree that copyediting errors should be fixed ASAP, and it’s great we can do that now.

The latter points; remember, ego out of the equation – look at what’s going on there. They’re all the same basic issue; better structure, less ramble, make sure it’s coherent.

#4: Writing Speed

The feedback above might be a blow to some egos. However, it’s decent feedback if you refuse to dwell on it. Instead of spending hours rewriting words, you simply take the feedback from the audience as suggestion and then make sure you take care to do better next time. (You can judge for yourself whether I’ve addressed these points sufficiently.)

This is the key to writing at speed; you get rid of the ego long enough to pull what you’ve learned from past experiences, your studies and your numbers and add them to your workflow. Then you carry on.

This is the key to writing quickly and productively. For the most part, you simply keep on writing. It’s what the pulp writers would have wanted.

But you have access to something they don’t.

#5: Retroactive Enchantment

Here’s the difference between writers back in the day and us. I touched upon it earlier in the article, but I’ll explain deeper here; we have the ability to edit anything now, in the future, and – to the eyes of our readers – in the past as well.

This was never available to old writers; if there was a mistake in your manuscript when you sold it, it’s probably still there now, years later, in all the editions where it hasn’t been fixed.

If I write a sentence today and post it to my blog and it’s completely nonsensical, I can edit it tomorrow and it’s like it never existed. It’s the same as if I release a book and there’s a spelling error or misaligned column in the book; within 24 hours, that can be fixed as though it never existed.

However, on the flip side, you can spend forever editing previous work and realigning it, and you shouldn’t. The rules I’ve explained in this article are a way of keeping you focused on writing more and putting more words out into the world. Only if you need to, should you devote more than the minimal time towards fixing what you’ve already done.

And that’s determined by two things; the goals you’ve set and how you are progressing towards them.