I’ve found the writing community to be supportive of one another. Sure, there are some people on social media that attack others for one thing or another, but this isn’t the norm, it’s the exception. It seems clear people like that are just hedging the negative so they can get draw attention to themselves and promote their own account. Pay them no mind. Authors in general support one another and freely offer advice.
For example:
A few weeks back, I came across a reddit thread posted by a frustrated writer who was so discouraged she didn’t even want to finish her book even though it was just about finished. I jumped right in with this reply: You have to finish it. You’re so close to the finish line, don’t quit the race now.
My first book, Three Worlds Collide: Rise of the Demon Scorpion, frustrated the beejeebers out of me, I explained. Four years ago, I actually completed the first version in a few months and published it right out of the gate. Sounds great, right? Nope. I had not taken the time to learn the craft. I had not submitted it to beta readers. I did not have it copyedited by a pro. I went cheap on the cover. Once I started reading books on writing I realized I had made every rookie mistake and then some.
I unpublished it. Rewrote it. Tried again with a cheap cover. Re-read it a ba-jillion times trying to catch all the grammar and punctuation mistakes. Re-published it. Let it ride for a few months. Then read some more on writing and realized it was still not as good as it could be. I unpublished again. Read some more on writing. Spent another year rewriting. It was greatly improved but I was so frustrated with the damn thing I wanted to chuck it out the window. I walked away from it so many times. Then I finally wised up, finished it best I could, and sent the manuscript to a beta reader whose general feedback was that it was pretty good but I’d made a lot of mistakes.
We collaborated. I fixed the mistakes and rewrote portions again. Then sent it to another beta reader. Same deal. It’s decent but you gotta fix this, he said. Fixed it and rewrote and added and reread and edited. Sent it to a 3rd beta reader. Same deal. By that time I had almost 3 years of every spare moment invested in that god forsaken manuscript. I wanted to burn it in the biggest bonfire I could imagine, but instead I gritted my teeth and sent it to a copyeditor who took over a month to review the 135,000 words that represented the toil, pain, grief, blood, and sweat of my effort. She sent it back and my heart sank as I scrolled through her edits. There were 10-20 issues per page. Multiply that by 400+ pages and we are talking like 6000 mistakes.
I screamed so loud at the computer monitor my neighbors called the cops. When SWAT arrived, I explained my dilemma. They nodded sagely, explaining they get at least a couple calls a week that involved an indie author on the brink of insanity. The paramedic gave me a chill pill and I went back to work. 2 months and 17 pounds of coffee later, I finished editing the manuscript. It had matured into a tight and smooth read with a decent opening too. The protagonists now had depth and the villain haunted my nightmares. Cool.
Then, it was time to finalize the cover. That was the best part. The designer was great. I had traveled the long and arduous road and was about to emerge from the dark forest of my first novel. With my last bit of strength I uploaded the manuscript, got the formatting straight, and clicked ‘publish’. Then I collapsed face first into the disaster that was my desk and slept for 37 hours straight. When I awoke, I checked the sales report. ZERO. It was at that moment I realized—the work had only begun.
I’m not sure how encouraging that story was to a new writer. It may have read like a cautionary tale. But, it’s a honest account of my journey with that first novel. The point? Never, never, never, never give up. Never.
Thanks, Gransom Hayes
Three Worlds Collide: Rise of the Demon Scorpion (A supernatural thriller)
Low Men (Romantic suspense: A symphony of psychological disorders wound into a spicy techno-thriller whodunit with a neo-noir vibe with a dash of medium spice. Hmm, well, okay… a bit more than a dash.)
These are available wherever books are sold. Check me out on social media.
This question was originally answered on reddit.com and reproduced here in an edited form. You can follow this link to view the original post:
Leave a Reply