Are you genuinely unaware that your writing isn’t just long-winded and rambling, there are sections, like the ones I tried to fix above, which is genuinely incomprehensible? If you are serious about wanting your ideas, such as they are, to be read, you need to work on writing in a way which can be understood. Understand this: at present, you are a terrible writer.
Because I’m nice, I’ll give you one more example of how your writing frequently fails on a basic grammatical level:
There’s a huge ambiguity there: is the bolded “they” referring to the nice boys, or the girls and women? It’s genuinely unclear, and the first impression is that the nice boys are getting involved with the pushy guys, which makes no sense, so then the reader has to backtrack and puzzle out whether or not the pronoun “they” is referring back to the subject, the nice boys, or the direct object, the girls and women. You’re making your reader work hard for something which should be direct and clear:
It’s not going to win any prizes for stylish prose, but it’s neat, compact, and nobody can claim they don’t know what it means.
My #1 rule for writing. Clarity above all else. And its corollary, less is more.
I hate this, that is, I hate the perception that commenting on the writing is mean, because in my world, critique is love. These are the kinds of conversations I have on a regular basis with my writer’s group. I’ve heard, at turns:
‘‘I can’t fucking stand your protagonist, she’s such a manipulative bitch.’’ (lovely to hear after three years working on a project.)
‘‘You are burning in pronoun hell’’
"This is some really lazy writing’’ and so on and so forth.
Last group, one of the members went off on a rant toward another member about his MS, where he yelled, "I was so fucking pissed off at you for doing that!‘’ Why? Because the guy was passionate about the genre in question and he wanted to make his friend a better writer. (he had specific suggestions to follow.)
It’s just part of the process. It sucks, it hurts, I’ve had crits that made me go stick my tail between my legs and not write another word for like two months. It’s absolutely necessary for growth. It’s absolutely necessary for publication. And I strongly suspect that taking that kind of heat is absolutely necessary to survive what comes after publication.
I think at helps that I have people looking at my work that have no strong feelings about my genre or the ideas I’m putting out there. It’s frustrating sometimes that I don’t have any other writers in my genre in the group, but it’s also helpful because they don’t get stuck on their love of the message or the genre, in fact, some of them are utterly bewildered about it, to hilarious effect. I hear things I would never hear from a bunch of other romance writers.
"This man appears to have… feelings. I don’t understand.‘’ 
Given how helpful it has been for me, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be helpful to have the view of people outside the genre. I too have difficulty parsing the meaning. It’s not even a matter of disagreeing. It’s a problem with understanding the argument in the first place.
A few months ago I finally got the results of a peer review of some blood-sweat-and-tears work I had drafted a while back.
Even though the criticisms were professionally expressed and most of them were valid, they generated the most negative feelings in me. Anger. Frustration. Embarrassment. Defeat. And they seemed to go on forever. After reading through them the first time, I was all “FUCK THEM!!!” It was like someone had reached into my chest and had carved it all out. I have never felt anything like that before.
But eventually I swallowed back the bile and permitted myself to remember that being able to endure peer review is what separates a scientist from a non-scientist. And being able to grow from a peer review is what separates a good scientist from a horrible scientist.
^^^ One time I got reviews back on a manuscript I put years of work and experimentations into, that were so upsetting I filed the email away and didn’t look at it for two weeks. Then I finally read the reviews in a more dispassionate state, took some of the feedback, rejected some and vastly improved my manuscript.
My husband, after working a year on his dissertation, met with one of the professors on his committee.
Professor: ‘‘I don’t get it.’’
Husband: “Um… what part don’t you get?”
Professor: ‘‘All of it.’’
Graduate school was not a happy time for him.
I had a recent research project/paper that had an in-house editor. She edited EVERYTHING. I didn’t think much of some of her edits, but I also didn’t think they hurt things much, so I accepted her changes. Then it had to go to an outside editor who reversed everything she had done. I’ll admit, I did a Snoopy dance and there may have been an “In your FACE!” gesture made in the privacy of my home office. But the outside editor also made changes to what I had written, most of which I thought were very good (lots of citation edits. Bah!).
So I don’t think an author has to like every change, or every editor. Some editors just suck. But others are really, really good at what they do.
One of the best pieces of advice I have ever received about writing was not to become too attached to one’s own work. That’s why it is always best (for me, at least) to put the first few drafts away for several weeks so that I can look at them again with fresh eyes. Sometimes the phrases/ideas/details I had initially been most pleased with turn out to be clunky, lacking in originality, uninteresting, etc. In addition, every time I think I have finished a piece, I invariably go through the revision stage again, often several times. It happens every single time. (You’d think I’d have learned how this process works.) And it goes for both scholarly work and fiction.
I do think it is important for a writer to have confidence in his/her work and to be able to listen to criticism, weigh it carefully, and decide whether to apply it. But if a writer rejects any and all suggestions out of hand, then he/she is unlikely to make any progress IMO.
The hardest thing for me about critiques when I first started was figuring out what to take, and what to leave. With time I began to develop a sense for the strengths and weakness of the different persons in our group. There’s one guy, every time he suggested anything to do with showing emotion, he would suggest terrible changes (I’m the go-to for emotions in my group, big surprise.) But as a former marine, if he got in your shit about an action sequence, combat or military training or something like that, you stand up and listen. Actually, two of the group members included a helicopter scene in their collaborative novel, and Mr. Marine spent some time with them and his model helicopters explaining how things worked. He also ripped apart my last submission which was a conversation between the General and a subordinate. Nobody else had any problem with the scene, but him, I listened.
If the 60-year-old Jewish man thinks my love scene is too gushy, meh. If my 35-year-old female friend marks something as ‘‘over the top,’’ I listen. But if Jewish old guy starts talking about ‘‘economy of narrative,’’ ‘‘theme,’’ or some other lofty literary concept, I listen to Jewish old guy because he’s the more knowledgeable about craft than all of us put together.
Likewise, if one person doesn’t like something, meh. If 6 people don’t like something, there’s likely a problem.
Sometimes, though, everyone disagrees, and that’s the worst. I once went through a round of edits with online critiquers with my first chapter: ‘‘I need more background info.’’ edits ‘‘This is too much background info.’’ Just on and on and on. Finally, I accepted that people were going to be split on this, but less is more - people are more likely to be put off by too much information at once than they are to quit reading a book if they have questions - and questions are the hook that keeps them reading.
The best editors seriously consider the purpose of the work and what you want it to be, and help you make it a better version of what you want it to be. The worst ones decide what they want it to be and make recommendations according to their preferences.
I did worse. This happened about ten years ago.
The reviews came to me in snail mail and I didn’t even look at them. They sat on my dining room table for three months.
One day my co-author got an email essentially saying WTF. The editor had contacted her (since they were friends) letting her know that the journal was waiting for me to resend the manuscript (with very minor revisions) so it could be published in the upcoming volume.
I would have known this if I had bothered opening the damn envelop. But fear of rejection is a powerful thing.
Agreed. I was a part of a lot of intense poetry critique groups where, frankly, hundreds of people over the years would come in, ask for comments, throw a tantrum about the comments, say the comments were mean or an ~attack~ on their ~souls~ because poetry is not meant to be edited but to be ~felt~ in the ~heart~! Because editing or crafting poetry is so inauthentic! Such an assault! It ruins the something-or-other!
Those people are still around. I see their names pop up when I drift back to the poetry boards (they get kicked out of the serious groups). And they haven’t improved. They are still just dashing down the first thing that comes into their minds and only people who want to be praised will praise them. It’s a shame because some probably have some genuine talent. It’s just being hidden in bad habits and a lousy attitude toward growth.
May I borrow it when you’re done?
And this is basically why we switched to a juried group (supermajority vote.)
Being a literary genius is not required. Being serious about improvement is. What is it Stephen King said in *On Writing? *
We made a recent change to our membership procedure. Before we accept someone into our group, we ask them to submit a piece of writing, and then invite them as our guest. We deliver a critique to them, and then they offer their critique of the other submission. This tells us whether the person is capable of critically evaluating a piece of writing and also how they will receive feedback on their own work. It also tells us their tolerance for incessant dick jokes and our general vibe, which is not for everyone.
It’s not a perfect system, and it’s sometimes terrible to have to tell someone hopeful and nice that they aren’t a good fit. But we kind of have a great thing going and don’t want to spoil it.
Y’all should keep in mind that just because it may seem to you that I’ve completely tuned out everything except rave reviews doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your time giving me feedback.
I admit to shamelessly abusing your thread to talk about writing. It’s a passion I’m subject about. I love talking about writing so much more than writing. That part is actual work. No, I’m really out of it today.
I respect you as a poster and I know it can’t be easy receiving this kind of feedback. I’m glad you’re going to be able to reflect on it and get something useful on it.
On preview: I’m leaving that mistake in because it proves the ‘‘really out of it’’ thing. I’ve been awake since 2am this morning due to anxiety and I’m doing my best to distract myself.
We should keep in mind something there is zero evidence for? Why?
“Kill your darlings.”
- On writing, variously attributed
Ahunter3, have you considered reading this book? Just curious.
Keep in mind that you’ll want to spend the first half of the book throwing blunt, unwieldy objects at the narrator: “if she squeezes your hand back it means she’s interested, you halfwit!”
Also Buddha.