a necessary bathroom break on the highway to publication
ONCE UPON A TIME IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY…
I shared an early hot mess draft of a novel I was working on with a non-writer friend.
I wanted to…
Share what I was working on with my friend.
Know if my story made sense.
Be told how cosmically amazing I was.
Like we all do, right?
When I got my book back the pages looked like one of Dexter’s kill rooms.
Red ink page after page after page. Every grammatical error, no matter how minor or massive, was gruesomely slashed to pieces. Entire sentences and paragraphs had been murdered.
“This book is a mess,” my friend told me.
Oh… Yeah. I know it’s a mess. It’s an early draft. What about the story, did you like it?
** Insert long awkward silence. **
“You used too many commas. And the main character is stupid.”
Wow. My tender petunia writer's soul was stomped. I vowed never to share my writing with anyone again.
What a mistake.
It’s never easy to hand over your sweat-and-tear-and-coffee-and-gin soaked book for someone else to look at. You’re rolling over and showing your vulnerable belly.
But it’s something every writer wanting to publish has to come to terms with.
Sharing your writing is a necessary bathroom break on the highway to publication.
You’re putting words on the page so they can travel outside your brain and into the world.
Getting other eyeballs on your work will help you develop as a writer. It will show you what isn’t on the page and what needs to be there.
Even bad feedback is good feedback. It will also thicken your skin into rhinoceros hide.
Sharing is a part of our nature. We share food, shelter, love, and laughter. We want to share with each other. What we don’t want is to be rejected or judged. What we need is the confidence to do it.
The world we live is a result of what we share with each other.
Share your stories.
And the more you share the easier it gets.
You’re cosmically amazing.
Keep going.
Hello!
My name is Jocelyn.
Story warrior, book lover, day dreamer, gardener, and creative. I help serious writers roll up their sleeves, get their novel ready for publishing, and reach readers. When I’m not elbow-deep in the story trenches, I’m outside world-building in my garden and battling weeds with my three criminal mastermind cats.