My confidence is through the floor.

[Daphnesmate]

I'm in the advanced stages of completing my first novel but now I feel very protective like I don't want anyone to read it and criticise it. It was never meant to be written for a mass market just a hobby but actually, I would like to make into a physical book now that it has been written.
I joined a critiquing writing group last week and I really can't face going back but actually some of the critiquing was very helpful and only one person seemed like a PITA and a bit negative about niggly things.
One of the issues I think, is that you are expected to read your work aloud and then everyone makes comments (some very constructive). Am I just too sensitive? I think it would work better for me if I could e-mail my work to them, I have always been extremely nervous at public speaking. My use of grammar also needs sharpening and I don't mind admitting this is a bit of an issue and something I need help with (probably a copy edit).

I don't want to make any major changes but I am open to hearing this bit doesn't quite make sense, isn't clear etc. Help, I need a bit of courage or perhaps the group thing is just a bit too daunting.

That sounds discomforting.

If you've changed your thinking from the achievement of writing your novel for yourself (well done) to exposing it and potentially achieving or trying for a publishing deal then you're on a path with some discomfort unfortunately - it's a rare bird that achieves a publishing deal with their first draft sailing through agent and publisher.

Perhaps try and think of it like a journey with some managed criticism and feedback in your group to perhaps more painful yet beneficial feedback or lack of it from agents, publishers and hopefully eventually readers.

You could pay for short cuts, a copy edit and/or a line edit though that won't protect your from some of the learning nor help you develop a thicker skin if that's what you want and need.

Equally emailing rather than delivering face to face might feel easier at the start but the feedback perhaps won't be the same. If you see the goal as improving your writing abilities, making your draft the best novel it can be and improving your ability to engage and take feedback less personally and improve your writing craft, perhaps such short cuts won't be helpful to you?

I do find the process of reading aloud, ideally with an audience, really helpful to identify the clunky sentences, where the rhythm works and where it falter and problems with language. I find reading aloud to myself doesn't achieve the same effect as I'm so familiar with the text that I tend to skip.

Good luck.

Thanks Zilla. My first instinct is to run away from the group but it could be really good for personal development if I can face my confidence issues head on. An issue I have is that not everyone is going to get the crisis my protagonist is facing because it primarily tackles issues that affect women and I suppose that I am afraid of boring my audience but then again, I guess any book has the potential to do that if its just not your thing.
One women in the group read her stuff with confidence, it was as if she was totally enjoying the experience and she oozed confidence throughout.

I thought there might be more chit chat but there was loads of constructive input and I think it would be worth going to if I could block out the extremely negative person in the corner and my negative self talk and have a little courage.

I'm interested when you say 'not everyone is going to get the crisis my protagonist is facing because it primarily tackles issues that affect women and I suppose that I am afraid of boring my audience'. I could be wrong but the last statistics I saw said that the majority of readers and book buyers are women.

Try not to worry about whether your subject will interest every reader at your group. As you say, it won't but the member of your group should realise this and tailor their feedback accordingly. If anyone can't do this, ignore what they say unless it is interesting (stupid people sometimes say interesting things).

When you give feedback to other writers in your group, you might not expect the same of someone writing fiction like Lee Child in your group that you would of someone writing like Edna O'Brian but you could give feedback to either if their characters don't have agency, don't interact with each other, the narrative moves accidentally between first and third person, the writer tells not shows (though it works for some published authors unfortunately) and so on.

If you can cope or at least ease yourself into a hot bath a toe at a time, it might be essential for your development as a writer to engage with feedback as actively as you can.

Good luck.

I expect it's good for published author events for the author to ooze confidence and be engaging though I've seen several agents say most of their authors are not good at such things - presumably that;s why they sit inside and write books instead of being actors.

I'm suppose I['m trying to say not to worry or envy if someone else 'oozed confidence' at your writing group and you don't feel you did. I'd be more interested in the story they're telling and how they tell it (the words they write rather than how they talk).

When you've got your publishing deal, you can have a beauty parade of top actors for your audio book (though I often like to listen to the author reading books themselves).

Thanks for taking the time to give your feedback on my post, I am very grateful, you have said some very wise things! Regarding the writer oozing confidence, I suppose if there is envy, it is because they feel rather than sound confident - self esteem has always been an issue with me, largely due to my upbringing and these difficulties have lingered which is why I want to spite them!

There’s not necessarily any correlation between confidence and ability, of course. Are you sure you’re not confusing other people’s ability to read aloud well with good writing? The person whose work I remember because it was so engaging from a writing workshop I used to go to years and years ago looked and sounded as if she was facing the Spanish Inquisition every week, but was by far the best there.

It sounds to me as if you need to decide what you want from the workshop — whether it’s primarily to grow your confidence as a public speaker or to improve your novel via feedback? Ideally, you’d do both, but it sounds as if you’re asking a lot of yourself in the circumstances.

Can I ask whether the negative person in the corner is a man? I am reminded of a publishing industry day workshop I went to once where the only man was vocally belittling of the other participants’ work and was deeply unimpressed when fifteen women of all ages and ethnicities told him his female characters were offensively sexist stereotypes and that the lingering sexualised descriptions of their corpses were offputting to female readers.

There actually is a connection between confidence and ability, but it isn’t that people with the most confidence have the greatest ability. There is the Dunning Kruger effect, where overconfident people are too inept to recognise their own ineptitude, and then its opposite, Imposter Syndrome, where people with high ability chronically doubt their worth, and it’s here that you often find the most gifted writers and artists. So I highly doubt you’re the only one there with that problem, although people can get very good at masking it.

For me, a writing group sounds like a very specific brand of torture (and in my limited experience, very full of the first kind of person), but if you’re wanting to get published, feedback is just something you’ll need to get used to.

Something that helped me with that in my work life was trying to think of my writing as a product rather than a piece of art. You’ve done the best you can to develop your product, but now you just need a bit of input to help get it to market. Put all your emotion into the writing of it. But when it’s time to hone and edit, pack that emotion away. Easier said than done though, I know!

I am reminded of a publishing industry day workshop I went to once where the only man was vocally belittling of the other participants’ work and was deeply unimpressed when fifteen women of all ages and ethnicities told him his female characters were offensively sexist stereotypes and that the lingering sexualised descriptions of their corpses were offputting to female readers.

Oh yes, we had one of those, too. Only ours would not be told that perhaps writing was not the best medium for an action-packed car chase. There was a lot of narrowing eyes in rear view mirrors. Very uncomfortable.

Yes, as it happens it was a man and funnily enough he had nothing to offer to the group in terms of his own work. I wished he wasn't there, I expect everyone else did as well. The other men in the writing group seemed very good though - very constructive and intelligent in a nice non-arrogant way.