I've learned yet another valuable lesson today in writing, one that kept awake most of the night fretting and fussing about until I had the break-through this morning: one can't expect to get useful feedback from critiquers when one only lets them read half the story.

Well duh, right? But for some odd reason, I didn't think this logic applied to novels, and now I know better.

For last couple of months or so, I've been struggling with the feedback on my novel, exasperated that a good deal of the suggestions would take me completely away from where I wanted to go with characters and plot events. I was reluctant to express my frustration, but now I can because I realize that it's nobody's fault but my own. My private writing group is awesome, full of really great writers who are incredibly smart and astute folks well on their way to being professionals in the field, and they worked their asses off giving me feedback and offering heartfelt suggestions that had me banging my head on my desk. And why was that?

Because I gave them a map of Utah and said "Show me where I should go on my vacation," but didn't tell them I wanted to see arches more than anything in the world. So of course I get suggestions like "go skiing in Snowbird" or "the Salt Flats are really cool because you can see the curvature of the earth" or "Bryce Canyon is really beautiful in the summer." All very cool suggestions, but not really what I wanted to spend my holiday doing. One person did tell me "You should go to Arches National Park" because I'd told her before that I wanted to look at sandstone arches and so she knew that's where I would really want to go.

That's basically what happened when I submitted my novel to the group for critique. See, somewhere along the way, I'd decided to cut the full story into two books, the first hopefully being a stand alone. I only have book one written at the moment and I was of course eager for feedback. One person knew where I was headed because she'd read the novelette it was based on, but the rest of them didn't, which I thought would be a good thing so I could get a reaction similar to what I would from normal readers. A good thing, right? In theory, except that we're not asking readers to offer us suggestions on improving our work, which we do ask of critiquers. I basically asked them to give me feedback without telling them where I wanted the actual larger story to end up, and so I shouldn't have been the least bit surprised when I came away frustrated because quite a bit of the feedback wouldn't take the story where I wanted it to go in book 2. It's only after much hair pulling and head banging and grumpiness that I've come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to ask them to critique the first book because in fact it's something more like LotR or His Dark Materials in format, not some on-going series of stories like Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta novels. I should have written the whole damn thing then asked them to help me split it into two. My frustration was nobody's fault but my own, and it's a relief to finally realize this. I know some folks say you shouldn't write book two until you've sold book one, but I don't believe any writing is a waste of time, especially if it's going to help me along in my craft, which I think is the case here. It may mean that this novel will have to sit in the closet for a few years until the time's right and I have a professional name to help me sway editors to take it on, but I think I will be better off for having written it the right way.