I never took creative writing courses at university. I wanted to, but I was shackled to a double major in economics and finance, worlds far removed from literature. With only four free electives to spend, I squandered them on philosophy (which, in retrospect, I should have pursued outright). That’s a story for another day. I did manage to complete a couple of critical writing courses and a couple of literature courses, and those linger in my memory.
My critical writing professor was a lesbian feminist. She assigned us nothing but female authors – save one strange detour, when I was made to compare Gloria Steinem with Thorstein Veblen on economics. In our very first class, she asked for a handwritten sample, pen on paper, no dictionaries, no spellcheck. This was the late ’80s; such tools barely existed. My handwriting was atrocious then – as now –, so I resorted to all-caps block letters. She commented on the novelty. She was a marvellous teacher.
My first literature professor adored poetry, though I did not. He made the best of it. He also had a curious fixation on penguins and mocked the way I pronounced finance (short “i,” the way I still say it). He was equally amused when I once asked to “interject” – apparently not the word he thought I should have chosen.
My last literature professor was enthralled by all things American. Our reading list was composed entirely of American writers, perhaps some women among them, though I don’t recall. Before his class, their works didn’t quite resonate with me. Still, it was enjoyable. He also insisted that one must understand an author’s history to grasp the text, an idea Barthes would have scoffed at. He, in turn, scoffed at Barthes.
My favourite moment came at the end. After the term ended, he posted back our final essays. On mine, he scribbled two lines alongside the grade:
I’ll miss your sardonic humour. My name is not David Grace.
I had typed the wrong name on the title page – borrowing one from a maths professor whose name stuck, while my literature professor’s did not. I still can’t recall his name. But I remember him fondly all the same.
Measuring progress is far simpler when you’re writing. You can count words. Or characters, if you’re a sadist. Sure, half of them might be drivel. Whole chapters may end up ceremonially executed by draft five, but at least you’ve done something. There’s a metric. A tally. A sense of movement.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
You can even see your progress, pages stack, paragraphs grow fat with promise. And if you still write on physical media (bless your nostalgic heart), you get the added catharsis of crumpling your failures and lobbing them at the bin like a disgruntled poet. It’s theatre. It’s progress. It’s delusional.
Editing, by contrast, offers no such cheap thrills. The word count doesn’t so much creep as collapse. One minute you’re a literary demi-god sitting on 80,000 words. The next, you’re scraping along at 74k and wondering whether your “tightening” has amputated a limb.
Yes, the prose might be cleaner. Punchier. Less like a whisky-soaked rant and more like a distilled insult. But does it feel like progress? Not in the way dopamine understands it.
As I’ve written before, editing takes me five – maybe ten – times longer than drafting. It’s a full hemispheric shift: from right-brain dreamscapes to left-brain bureaucracy. Creativity gives way to spreadsheet logic. Grammar. Timelines. Continuity. Did she sit before she spoke, or after? Is this line meant to be his? Why is this in past tense? Is this in any tense?
And so, the grind.
Yes, there are flashes of satisfaction – a retooled transition here, a twist landed just-so there. But mostly, it’s a long, slow crawl through self-loathing and misplaced modifiers.
I’ve spent most of my adult life toggling between left-right hemisphere roles. And frankly, the left side still gives me hives. The corporate world, bless its hollow soul, tried to stuff me in a logic-shaped box. A coffin of metrics, meetings, and “measurable outcomes.” I’m still recovering.
So why not outsource editing? Why not let someone else swing the machete through this jungle?
Two reasons:
I secretly enjoy the act of refinement. It’s masochism, but it’s my masochism.
I operate on a margin so thin it’s practically theoretical. A Schrödinger’s budget – simultaneously there and not.
Let’s get one thing straight: not all feedback is good feedback. In fact, a depressingly large proportion of it is the literary equivalent of asking a vegan to review your steakhouse. Technically they read the menu, but were they ever really your audience?
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
We live in a culture that treats opinion like currency. Everyone’s got one. Everyone’s desperate to spend it. And nowhere is this more evident than in the world of beta reading—a supposedly sacred process in which brave authors hand over their embryonic manuscripts to friends, lovers, ex-wives, and total strangers in the desperate hope someone will “get it.” Most don’t.
Know Thy Manuscript (Before It’s Murdered by Committee)
Before you even think about soliciting feedback, ask yourself: do you actually know what your manuscript is? Is it a quiet literary allegory disguised as sci-fi? A philosophical middle finger wearing the trench coat of genre fiction? A slow-burn deconstruction of capitalism wrapped in alien gloop?
If you can’t answer that, neither can your beta reader. And you’ll deserve every clueless comment that comes slouching back across your inbox like a drunken tortoise.
Audience Matters. (No, Really.)
Let me put it in culinary terms for the metaphorically impaired: if someone hates seafood, they are not qualified to tell you whether your oysters are overcooked. They might be able to describe their gag reflex in exquisite detail, but that’s not useful culinary feedback—that’s autobiography.
Likewise, if your beta reader consumes nothing but cosy mysteries and thinks House of Leaves was “a bit confusing,” why in the name of Borges are you handing them your experimental novella about time, recursion, and the semiotics of grief?
I Know a Writer. I Know Your Pain.
A personal note, if I may. A close friend is a writer. A good one, in fact. But our ideas are so philosophically incompatible that they could be placed on opposite ends of a Möbius strip. Every time they read my work, they suggest alterations that, while technically well-formed, have the uncanny knack of annihilating the entire point of the piece. When I respond, “That’s a great idea—why don’t you write it?” they get cross.
Because here’s the truth: most beta readers don’t give you feedback on your book. They give you notes on the book they wish you’d written.
Signal vs Noise: Spotting the Useful Reader
There’s a simple test I use to distinguish signal from noise.
Bad beta feedback:
“I didn’t like the main character.” “Why don’t they just call the police?” “This story would be better with a love triangle.”
Good beta feedback:
“The way you structured the timeline echoes the narrator’s fragmentation—was that deliberate?” “I wasn’t confused until Chapter 5, which made the earlier ambiguity retroactively frustrating.” “The tonal shift on page 42 feels earned but abrupt—was that intentional?”
In short: good feedback interrogates execution. Bad feedback critiques intention.
The Beta Reader Interview (Yes, You Need One)
You wouldn’t hire a babysitter without asking if they’ve ever met a child. Why would you let someone babysit your manuscript without screening for genre literacy?
Ask them:
What do you normally read?
What do you hate reading?
Can you name a book you loved that nobody else seemed to?
Have you read [Insert book similar to yours]? Did you like it?
If they look at you blankly or start talking about Colleen Hoover, back away slowly.
The Beta Reader Zoo: Know Your Species
Here are a few common subspecies to watch for:
The Rewriter: Wants to turn your Kafkaesque nightmare into Eat, Pray, Love. Run.
The Literalist: “But how would that actually work in real life?” Mate, it’s a parable. About entropy.
The Cheerleader: “Loved it! Don’t change a thing!” (Translation: I skimmed it during Bake Off.)
The Cynic: Thinks everything is nihilistic, including your dedication page.
The Goldilocks: Rare. Reads the book you actually wrote, not the one they wish you had. Cultivate this one like a bonsai tree.
Curate, Don’t Crowdsource
Beta reading is not a democratic process. You are not running a focus group for toothpaste branding. You are searching for a handful of individuals who understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and whether you’ve pulled it off—or fallen on your clever, post-structuralist arse.
Better three brilliant readers than thirty who think you should add a dragon in Chapter Two.
Final Thought
Your beta reader is not your editor. They’re not your therapist. And they’re definitely not your mum (unless your mum has an MA in critical theory and a fetish for broken narrative structures).
Choose wisely.
Or don’t – and enjoy reading thirty pages of feedback that begins, “I don’t usually read this sort of thing, but…”
PS: I love how Dall-E totally misfired on the cover image. lol
Ridley Park 