After months of hearing about it, and the best laid plans to read it, I finally got a new, “Absolutely Final Platinum Edit” in my email and read my friend, “G’s,” novel.

I loved it.

That’s the simplest, truest sentence in this entire post, and also the one my dysfunctional brain immediately tried to ruin. It was right in my wheelhouse as a reader, the kind of story I’d happily recommend to friends, and the kind of book I’d finish and think about later. It’s one of those rare times when you find reading an unpublished work from someone you know is better than rewatching Star Trek for the fifteenth time.

Unfortunately, when G asked for specifics at the Sunday writer meetup, my author brain short-circuited, because somewhere along the line, I’ve internalized a dangerous rule: “Praise without critique is dishonest.”

To be fair, I am consistent with this. If someone says something nice about something I wrote (or really, anything nice to me in general), I’ll roll my eyes and downplay it. If they come at me with criticism, I’ll engage, defending, discussing, or admitting I’m a hack and skulking off. The unspoken “I liked it…” by itself, though, is a minefield reminiscent of “I’m fine.”

So, instead of simply letting my appreciation for his novel stand, I went digging for something he might improve. I felt obligated to show that I’d thoughtfully considered my praise, but also to give him just a little something to ponder after I spent four hours hearing “his side of his story.” So, I gave an opinion. The problem is: he listened, and three days later had a “Platinum Plus Final Draft.” The bigger issue is: he’d already queried the book out to agents, and now I, not an agent, had him revising the manuscript. The story wasn’t broken. An editor wasn’t demanding changes. He just took my critique seriously and was determined to address it.

I should have felt honored. Instead, I felt sick. Not because I think my ideas were wrong, but because I sorta crossed an invisible line. I didn’t respond as a reader. In the context of our Sunday writer meetup, I was a writer with opinions, and those opinions had consequences. I keep thinking, maybe I made him doubt something that didn’t need doubting.

Now, okay, yes, maybe this is subconscious payback. G had previously read Halferne Incubus. It is not his wheelhouse. He’s not even a fan of the genre. However, an offhanded comment he made about the ending made me realize: “Oh, he missed that… I was too subtle.” I then did a rewrite of the last two chapters and sprinkled in a few setups to pay them off earlier in the story.

Similarly, another writer in our same group, “D,” read Halferne Perfidy and made the offhanded comment, “I half expected you to end it this way…” Which, noooo, was never my intent, and I’m sorry I distracted you for 200 pages thinking that was even remotely possible. I then did a minor rewrite of several key scenes to prevent such assumptions in the future.

Point being, in both cases, my response wasn’t “Yeah, you’re right” or “You misunderstood me.” It was me mumbling under my breath during a rewrite, wondering if I’d failed as a writer to communicate my vision properly, or if it was simply a case of two readers not being familiar with sci-fi tropes I was dropping like a local. The first is a craft problem. The latter is an audience problem. Of course, it’s also possible it’s both, or neither, and just a mismatch of expectations, and nobody is at fault.  At which point, we finally come to the point of this post:

Where is the point when an author should just step back and say, “Enough. I’m right. You just don’t get me!” and is this a mark of experience, confidence, or arrogance?

As writers, especially ones who came up through critique groups, we’re trained to assume misunderstanding equals failure. If a reader didn’t get it, we must be doing a poor job, even though I can think of plenty of famous works of literature and art that didn’t get their due until years later. I’m just not humble or realistic enough to put myself in that column.

On the other hand, I think about a whole stack of novels I, personally, didn’t get right on the first read. A Canticle for Leibowitz was a survival novel for a ten-year-old growing up in 1979’s heightened Cold War, not a statement about rebirth and redemption. Asimov’s Foundation series was a light Star Wars-style adventure for a teenager, not a treatise on rational thought vs. stagnation in an enlightened society. Still, I got what I got from those books, and it made me come back and reread them many times since, getting something different and personally relevant each time.

Is that always true, though? As a reader, I want to be generous, open, and receptive. As a writer, I want feedback that strengthens the work, not whittles it down. As a friend, I don’t want my opinions to derail someone else’s confidence or creation. If I’m viewed as just a reader, my opinion differs from that of a writer. In this case, did I give G an idea to strengthen his novel, or did I tell him how to make his grounded, real-world novel feel more like one of my Halferne sci-fi stories, which are in no way grounded in realism and are intentionally explorations of dysfunction turned up to 11?

When you’re early on, any clarity is good clarity. Later, clarity becomes more about what you really want to explain and what you want to imply. Honestly, though, can any of us watch our favorite show without having an opinion about how we might make it more to “our” tastes? I do it with Star Trek every week. Remember: It’s not toxic fandom if I keep it to myself.

So, where is the line? Does every reaction require me to compensate? Does every misinterpretation need a correction? Does every misunderstood ending require a rewrite? Can’t we just say, “It is what it is, and whether I got your ending or you liked my book, that’s the way it is.”

I don’t think there’s a real answer. I’m pretty sure I’ll keep taking my hits, making me rewrites, and maybe one day become Harlan Ellison, “Screw you, that story was perfect. You just don’t get it.” Maybe someday I’ll be able to give or receive feedback without apologizing either way and assuming one of us must change our drafts.