In Listening to Copernicus I mentioned the kind of would-be writer who maintains their self-belief that their writing is good in the teeth of evidence to the contrary. I'm not talking about Beginner Writer who has yet to learn to be bad because they have yet to learn how to read their writing against good writing, understand the difference, and do something about it. Nor am I talking about Aspiring Writer who feels they get nowhere in competitions and slushpiles, because that just means they haven't got there yet. I'm talking about Apparently Deaf Writer (with apologies to all writers who are hearing impaired). Apparently Deaf Writer goes ploughing on in the same furrow and can't or won't change what they do, despite vast amounts of direct feedback from teachers and peers, and what you might call indirect feedback from reading good writing and prize-winning writing and everything else which (however arguably) plenty of knowledgeable people agree to be good.
In 'Listening to Copernicus' I suggested that Apparently Deaf Writer may be suffering from cognitive dissonance, with so much of their self-worth invested in their work (as an extension of their self) being good that the suggestion that it isn't is too painful to be born. The teacher's ignorant, the industry's only interested in rubbish, the rest of the world hasn't caught up, the class/forum/slush-pile-readers are jealous or frightened, the day job is sapping their soul. (Which isn't to say that all these don't happen sometimes. But we all know people who can't entertain the idea that any bad event is their own mistake, or even fault, just as we all know people capable of feeling guilty for someone else treading painfully on a drawing-pin in Siberia.)
But for each Apparently Deaf Writer who has their fingers firmly stuck in their ears, I think there are probably dozens or even hundreds whose problem is rather that they have yet to learn how to listen. In other words, who know enough to seek out feedback, but don't know what to do with it when they get it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's a central element of learning to be a writer. From the first time that a primary teacher says "Your poem's lovely; why don't you go and turn on a tap and really listen to what water sounds like, because it doesn't always go splish, splosh, splash?", to ten single-spaced pages of revisions from your editor, to a three-page review in the Times Literary Supplement, writers get feedback. It's our job to decide what to do with it.
The typo on page 237 is easy to deal with, though a string of such points when you were hoping to hear whether or not they really believed Charlotte would murder Ben is frustrating. Learning to give feedback is the siamese twin, the Janus, of learning to take it. Information about whether or not fiction which combines crime and MumLit is selling at the moment may be a necessary reality-check, but probably not now (if ever, as Editorial Anonymous has just pointed out). But being told that the reader didn't believe Charlotte would murder Ben is harder to deal with. Is it that Charlotte's not believable, or that Ben isn't, or that the reader is a forensic pathologist who knows that when on an impulse Charlotte bangs his head on the dashboard and locks him in the car with the engine running, it isn't going kill him, not since the days of catalytic converters. (Easy solution to that one: Ben is a vintage car enthusiast). Is it that you haven't built up Charlotte's motives clearly enough? (Solution: what's just a bit noisy and obvious to you is about right for the first-time reader). Or is it that your reader is a dear friend, but the kind of bloke who makes you believe there's something in the theory that all men exist somewhere on the autistic spectrum, since he's completely failed to read your careful destruction of Charlotte's sense of self-worth to the point where her learned helplessness makes her only way out seem to be stabbing Ben as he sleeps?
In other words, even if you don't resist feedback totally (which is always my fleeting, first reaction, being a stubborn and internally rebellious soul), it's not just a matter of meekly accepting what you're told either. For one thing, their solution (make Charlotte ex-SAS) is wrong for the story. For another, they may be the wrong reader for the book. They may have spent the whole book waiting for a realistic-but-comforting MumLit solution, and be unreconciled to it ending with Charlotte's appeal against her life sentence. And for a third, what on earth do you do about very general feedback from someone in whose hands the book's fate rests, that it's 'too quiet' or, even more devastating, "I just didn't love Charlotte enough"? Is the latter absolutely crucial and you must go back and rewrite her? How? - you love Charlotte to bits after spending two years in her company. Or is it a matter of personal taste? Get submitting elsewhere. Or has the agent/editor missed the point of the book, which is that you shouldn't love Charlotte? Though with this last you may explain that, but they probably still won't take it on, and all the other things that the book's about will never be heard by any readers at all.
So really hearing feedback is not a simple matter, and that's before you start pulling your work apart again to reflect it. Anyone who deals with aspiring writers has to remember that, and to learn how to give feedback so that the writer feels safe enough to keep their ears open, and hears something they can make sense of. There's no point in telling the bloke who's just won a scholarship to IRCAM that he'll get nowhere if he can't write a hook that people can hum, but there's also no point in telling the teenager with her guitar and her first love song that anything that isn't twelve-tone is old-fashioned tripe. Feedback may be loud, but it mustn't be deafening.
