If the clouds in heaven part and inspiration pours forth, you may just nail that idea. But more than likely, you probably won’t.
Your work needs to be revised, reshaped and sometimes even scrapped and restarted.
But you can only re-write so many times and you won’t really know if your work will resonate with readers. This is where feedback comes in and can make or break your project — depending on how you take it.
Feedback, constructive or cruel, can be hard to manage. How do know what feedback to adopt and what to reject?
You need to ask yourself, does the feedback come from someone qualified to give it? And if it does, do they share your vision for the story, or are they unconsciously turning it into a story that they’re interested in?
At the end of the day, it’s up to you to determine what feedback strengthens your original vision and to drown out the voices that don’t matter.
This can be stressful for any author, but it’s important to remember that feedback is necessary and with the right people in your creative circle, your project will get better because of it.