If I close my eyes, can you see me?

I'll do something about it if several people mention it.

I hear that a lot from writers. Usually after they have received critical feedback on their finished manuscript. Usually they're talking about something someone said they don't agree with. Usually it's something they don't want to change.

Let's look first at how we get critical feedback for our writing. If you're very lucky you might get ten people to read your manuscript. If you're well connected maybe you'll get a few more. Let's say fifteen.

The first cut will be the five or six returned manuscripts that come back with a ten word or less eulogy. Most people are nice. Telling you something you put so much effort into doesn't work or that they didn't finish it, is beyond them. You're their friend. They will grasp hold of the bit that reminds them of a book they read and tell you: It was great. Really enjoyed it. You will struggle to get more from them. Maybe a few typos.

The second cut is the majority, the seven or eight who give you feedback on high level story points. This will be valuable. It will tell you generally what doesn't work in the flow of the story. Once more they are probably being nice. They are being polite about how badly the failures impacted the story. They will wrap what didn't work in a long list of good points that may undermine how bad the bad is.

The third cut is the anomaly. Usually just one, sometimes none. There are a bunch of reasons why they didn't get your story but they are very worth listening to. Probably they are genuinely being helpful. They probably read your book despite never reading your kind of book. Amongst the static there will be some key issues you should address. You will probably discount everything they say because they don't read your kind of books.

The fourth and final cut is the one, maybe two that dissect the good from the bad to the mediocre. This feedback is analytical. It will hurt the hardest because it is the most truthful. The most detailed. It may echo feedback from cut two and three. But half of the important feedback on your manuscript will come from just these one or two. If you're lucky they will come from different perspectives and they will have picked different things that didn't work. You will almost certainly ignore most of what they uniquely say too, because they don't agree.

You've had fifteen people read your manuscript and you know it's not perfect. A cross section agree on some of what doesn't work, you're preparing to address this. But half the critical issues have been told to you by one or two people, they are probably different issues. You're going to ignore these because nobody else has mentioned them?

It is not easy. I have said more than once, there comes a point when finishing the book has to stop being about you. It has to be about the characters, the writing and the relationship with the reader. If you give the reader reason to doubt or disbelieve or falter, think about this - you covet their attention. You now have it. Your readers are busy. They are investing their precious time in holding your book in their hand. There are a quite literally a million other books they can be reading. Many of these books are just two clicks of a button or a swipe of the screen away. You think there's something special about you, something extra special, that will hold their attention?

You need to take every piece of critical feedback and distil it, filter it through who your characters are, their goals and context to the world around them, to the people around them. You need to do this for every single piece of feedback. If you're honest to yourself, the story, the characters and the reader, you will know which ones to ignore and which will benefit your book. You should not need to be told more than once. Not if you're as good as you think you are.