On What Your Readers See That You Don't

In all my years of working with writers in group settings, there is one thing that has happened every single time without exception.

Every writer has been surprised by what readers found in their work.

Every one.

Not occasionally. Not most of the time. Every writer, every session, without fail. Something a reader noticed, valued, or was moved by that the writer hadn't seen — or worse, had dismissed entirely before anyone else had a chance to experience it.

I've thought about what this means for a long time. And here's what I keep coming back to.

We will never fully know the value of our writing to our readers. Not before we share it. Not even after, entirely. A story lands differently for every person who reads it, at every moment in their lives when they happen to pick it up. Meaning moves. It shifts. It belongs, in some important way, to the reader as much as it does to us.

This is why trying to force value or meaning into a story rarely works. When we decide in advance what our writing has to communicate, what it has to make the reader feel or understand, the writing tends to feel it. It becomes didactic — more concerned with delivering a message than telling a truth. There's nothing wrong with writing that teaches or persuades, but it's a different thing entirely from a story that moves someone. The most powerful stories don't explain themselves. They simply are. And what the reader takes from them is often something the writer never consciously put there.

The sooner you share your imperfect writing, the sooner you'll discover what's actually resonating. What's landing. Where your strengths as a writer live — and where the strengths of the story itself lie, which are sometimes two very different things.

Here's the second reason to share imperfect work, and I want you to hold onto something before I say it.

It will never be perfect.

Not this draft. Not the next one. Not after six revisions or sixteen. Perfection is not a destination writing arrives at — it's a moving target the inner critic invented to keep you from finishing. The sooner you can release the idea that your work needs to reach some invisible standard before it's allowed to be seen, the sooner you can start learning what it actually needs.

Sharing imperfect work does something quietly powerful. It undermines the inner critic at its own game. For writers who procrastinate, for writers whose perfectionism runs hot, sharing something unfinished and discovering that it still has value — that it still reaches people, still says something true — is genuinely transformative. It teaches you something no amount of private revision ever could.

You are allowed to play. To experiment. To take risks on the page. You are allowed to write something strange or unresolved or not quite there yet and still call yourself a writer. In fact I'd argue those qualities — the willingness to explore without knowing the outcome — are what define a true artist.

First drafts and revisions are different stages of creation, and they ask different things of us. The first draft is for exploration, for play, for expression. It's where you find out what the story is. Revision is where you shape what you found. But none of that is available to you until something exists on the page. You cannot revise what hasn't been written. You cannot discover what your story is capable of from the outside.

My August Writer's Camp is built around exactly this. A space to write without pressure. To share your work with a warm, supportive group of fellow writers and receive feedback that helps you see what's landing. And to practise giving that same feedback to others — because learning to read craft in someone else's writing is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your own.

We write together. We share. We look at what's working and talk about why. It's the kind of session where writers consistently leave surprised by what was already in their writing all along.

Camp begins August 3rd. If you'd like to spend a few weeks writing, sharing, and discovering what your readers see that you don't — I'd love to have you.

Register here: www.ihelpyouwritethings.com/writinggroups

Wishing you and your stories all the best,
Trevor Martens
Founder, I Help You Write Things

P.S. No experience needed. Just bring something you've written — perfect or not. Especially not.