Once upon a time, writing was a solitary activity. Just you, your thoughts and your pages. Now, writing can be one of the most sociable things you can do on the internet. You can post chapters on a blog as you finish them, or on a serialisation platform like Wattpad, or in online communities.
Some of us – like me – hate to show anything before it’s had a lot of polishing.
We’re all different, but we all need feedback at some stage. Even the most secretive of writers (me!) occasionally yearn for an encouraging comment, simply for its own sake, to share the thing we’ve been building, to help us keep going, Artistic life is sometimes perverse.
Are there good times to show an unfinished work? Are there times when you should be cautious? Might you live to regret it? What about comments from readers – when might they be useful and when might they steer you wrong?
These are the questions I’m considering in this episode with my co-host, independent bookseller Peter Snell.
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PS If you’d like more concentrated writing advice, try my Nail Your Novel books. If you’re curious about my own creative writing, find novels here and my travel memoir here. If you’d like to support bricks-and-mortar bookstores (US only at present) use Bookshop.org. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, find my latest newsletter here and subscribe to future updates here.
Nail Your Novel 
Bookmarking this for later, but I have every intention of letting people read my novel when I get the whole story written down, but before I start to polish.
I’ll listen for you listening.