Oh, kids, it’s two days ’til Christmas and I’m trying to meet a work deadline. Not to mention the holiday deadline. So while I keep editing, my friend Christa Allan’s going to take over. This post originally ran on her own blog, and I’m so pleased to republish it here.
Are You Ready for Publication?
Not your manuscript. You.
Here’s the test: strip down to your pre-fall Garden of Eden nakedness and stand on the fifty-yard line during halftime at the Super Bowl while everyone submits critiques of your body on the Jumbotron.
Sounds horrifying, doesn’t it! I looked forward to publication of my first novel, but I had no idea that I was signing up for any of what followed. You should be prepared—because here’s what I’ve come to learn a year after my debut novel was published and months after the release of my second.
1. You can’t follow your writing. I chanted this to my students for years (I taught high school English), but this never became so alive to me as it has since my own words hit print. If I could tap a reader on the shoulder as she’s finishing my book, I could explain why I phrased that sentence a certain way or why I included that simile. The ending of my novel is most frequently slammed. Might I have ended it differently had I known the sequel wouldn’t be contracted? Perhaps. But as one reader at a book club stated: “I think how people react to the ending says more about them than it does about the ending itself.” Crazily, that’s been true more often than I would have expected.
2. You can’t obsess over ratings. Some days, my Amazon and Goodreads ratings plunge faster than the stock market. When I find myself getting angsty over a drop from 4.2 to 3.25, I look at the front page of the newspaper. It’s called perspective.
3. You are not your writing. Okay, maybe I am in that a writer invests so much of him/herself into a novel. When I read a review like this: “Buying and reading this book was the biggest waste of money and time since buying the magical egg peeler the infomercials. It was horribly written and tedious,” I make a conscious effort to not personalize it as if I’m horrible and tedious. It also helps to envision dropping the reviewer in a vat of crunchy peanut butter.
If you’re a pre-published writer who feels compelled to vehemently defend or sarcastically retort to someone who has critiqued your writing … fasten your seatbelt. Dealing with an assessment of your writing that might suggest it needs more work pales in comparison to some reviews you may receive. When my publisher generously offered free Kindle downloads of my novel, I read several lovely reviews. Others … not so much. Just a few of the top vitriolic ones:
• The ending was so terrible I could barely justify this 3 (rating)
• This book was unrealistic and a waste of my time
• Confusing and in my humble opinion, pointless
In spite of all that, here’s the bottom line: if now and forever, all I ever have is that one response from that one reader who said she saw herself in Leah (my protagonist) and changed her life because of it … the emotional nakedness was worth the price.
Are you ready for publication? If you can handle the Jumbotron without buckets of drugs and/or a lifetime of therapy, then you’re probably ready.
* A true Southern woman who knows any cook worth her gumbo always starts with a roux and who never wears white after Labor Day, Christa Allan is the mother of five, grandmother of three, and a recently retired high school English teacher. She has four books in print; her latest release is Threads of Hope (March 2013). Christa and her husband Ken live in New Orleans in a home older than their combined ages. You can follow her on Twitter (@ChristaAllan).
Tweet: Are you ready for publication? Not your manuscript. You.
Tweet: You are not your writing! Put that nasty review behind you and focus on the positive ones.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”