Tucker Max, I’m sorry but I have to wholeheartedly disagree with your premise to this posted article.

If you are writing a novel, are you writing it for experienced editors and reviewers? Or are you writing it for readers?

If you are writing for an audience of readers then the feedback from them is far more valuable than the feedback from “experienced” editors and “experts.”

Back when I was first writing, many, many, many decades ago, I was a closet writer. I wrote simply because I simply could not NOT write. It was an obsession; an addiction. I never shared my writing with anyone.

Way back then (many, many decades ago) I had a girlfriend. She was a simple country girl who read approximately one book every three years. Reading was something that she felt she was “free of” having graduated from high school. To her, reading books was something “other people” did.

I had told her that I was a writer (back then it would have been more appropriate to say that I was a writer-wannabe) but I never asked her to read anything I had written. At that time I had never shared my writing with another human. I didn’t think her feedback would be helpful. After all, she was not an expert in any sense of the word.

But then one day after a love-making session she suddenly asked, “So when are you going to let me read some of your writing?”

I was rather taken aback since she had never shown any interest in my writing. But I was feeling quite relaxed so I got up and fetched her the first two chapters of a novel I was working on at the time.

I got back in bed with her and smoked cigarettes while she read those two chapters. When she was done she violently threw the manuscript down onto the bed and got up and went into the bathroom where she proceeded to vomit. It wasn’t a casual vomit but rather a very loud one.

I was stunned.

Eventually, she came out of the bathroom and quickly proceeded getting dressed. Eventually, she looked at me and said, rather forcefully, “Don’t ever let me read your writing ever again!”

She finished getting dressed and then left my apartment, slamming the door behind her.

That was the very, very best (and first) feedback I have ever gotten as a writer in the many decades that I have been a writer. I was utterly blown away. I suddenly realized that if I could affect someone that intensely then maybe there was something to my writing. If I could illicit such a profound response from a reader — an ordinary reader who was not an expert — then just maybe my writing wasn’t a waste of time.

Since then, I have shared my writing with so-called experts and I have never gotten the honest response that I did from that girlfriend. All I got was intellectual mumbo jumbo about structure and grammar and “perceived correctness.”

But it was that vomit from a non-intellectual that inspired me. From that moment on I was a writer that could not be stopped.

If I could reach inside someone with my writing and make them vomit then, just possibly, I could reach inside them and make them feel something even better. Maybe I could make them feel joy. Maybe I could put them in a place where their lives could change for the better. And, better yet, maybe I could make them laugh. Through my non-intellectual girlfriend of the time, I realized that maybe I could touch my readers and somehow make a difference.

That vomit from a non-intellectual, non-reader was far more valuable than any advice I’ve ever gotten from any so-called expert. It is the readers I write for; not the experts, the editors, the professionals.

“When people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

I like that quote from Neil Gaimon. That vomitting girlfriend I had so many, many years ago told me my writing was wrong but she didn’t tell be what was wrong nor how to fix it. She left that for me to figure out. And that was a gift far, far better than any “professional” editor could have given me.

It profoundly helped make me a writer. And it helped me realize that the only true, helpful feedback is from readers.