Trust and Other Things

What's hard about putting your draft three manuscript out in the hands of strangers for critique and review?

Ask a mother how hard it was to leave their child with a childcare provider or drop them off for the first day of school, cut that feeling in half, and you have about hard it is for a new author to drop his baby off in the hands of a stranger.

Why a stranger? Because friends and family have built-in filters to reviewing and critiquing your work. They might give you grammar and spelling corrections, but much else is subject to familiarity filtration. They know it's your dream to write well and be published. They know you've spent (up to) years working on your baby. They want you to have a chance at your dreams but they also don't want to have to step on them, either.

For me, just knowing this makes their feedback hard to believe if it doesn't contain some serious critique regarding what should be improved or done differently. Thus, giving it to a stranger is really the only way to get objective and unfiltered input.  Even then there are possible problems, as I eluded to in my last post.

Thing is, I have to put it out there, I have to see what it can do to readers. Will it draw them in and take them away? Will it engage them and spur them to read it through it's 200k+ length? Or does it need shortening and work on pace and progress? Do the characters need more life breathed into them?

To know, I have to start trusting... first, in my writing. I know for damn sure it doesn't outright suck.  Second,  in my ability to fix what may need fixing. For that, it needs to go out.

I read somewhere some advice from a writer to writers and it went something like this: "So you finished your first novel? Congratulations, that's quite an accomplishment. Now put it on the shelf in the basement and start writing your next one."  The implications are two-fold: that all first books are shit and that you need to be able to do it again.

If I believe that, then I'm more inclined to put S7 on Amazon than a dusty shelf. Why? Because if it truly is shit, then I'll finally know. No assumptions, no doubt. Going forward to novel two is much easier then, mostly because I won't try to continue the S7 story, I'll start with a fresh premise, plot, and characters. I knew S7 was a huge and complex story for a first novel, a real challenge. I won't be crushed if it isn't up to snuff, but I might be if I never find out.

Anyhoo... it's raining outside this writer's window and time to write.