30 things I've learnt from 5 years being published: no 24 – you know your book better than anyone else
September 6 2023 marks 5 years since my first novel was released 😲
I’ve now published 6, and have 2 more under contract.
To celebrate, I’m sharing a new post about what I’ve learnt from being published EVERY DAY throughout the month. This post is part of that series!
Click here for the rest →
I think when we’re starting out, most writers feel - understandably - that we don’t really know much about anything. We’re winging it, writing from the heart and enjoying the ride.
And so when we start submitting to agents and publishers, it’s a huge, scary thing, and we really take their feedback to heart.
I should caveat this by saying that there is a certain breed of writer - we all know the type I’m talking about 😉 - who doesn’t take this feedback to heart and instead decides THEY KNOW BEST ABOUT EVERYTHING, but these guys are not the ones I’m talking about here and they are unlikely to be troubling the bestseller lists any time soon.
Most writers feel very discouraged when they first get feedback on their work. It’s totally normal to feel like you know nothing, and that you’ve been deluding yourself the whole time.
I actually don’t think there’s anything harder than dealing with that first round of feedback on a finished draft.
It’s so brave to put your writing out there, and to have people come back and pick holes in it is incredibly tough.
But in case you hadn’t spotted a theme in these posts, a lot of things about writing are incredibly tough! And you DO toughen up, and it does get easier.
So please know that you are not alone if you’ve spent a couple of hours crying after your agent or editor has delivered their verdict of your new work. Work you’ve spent months and months on and really hoped they would come back and declare a piece of genius that needs absolutely no editing whatsoever.
(That pretty much never happens by the way.)
But what I think is important - and what I’ve learnt over the past five years - is that you have to keep the faith in your own vision.
You do know your book better than anyone else.
You really do.
I’ve had this proved to me on multiple occasions over the past five years.
I’ve been persuaded by decisions taken by publishing teams that turned out to be completely wrong for the book.
I’m not blaming the publishers, by the way. You might know your book better than anyone else, but they know the market.
They are approaching it all from a completely different angle to you.
For them, the goal is to get retailers interested in the book, to find a strong, profitable niche to market your book towards, and to sell as many copies as possible.
For you, the goal is often so much more personal.
But because their goals are different, they don’t always know what’s best for the story itself. And this is why I think it’s so important to have an open discussion with your editor if there’s something you don’t agree with.
Obviously I’m not saying you should throw your toys out of the pram and say no to all the changes they suggest. But instead I think it’s important to take some time to sit with the feedback and feel in your gut how it feels to you. And to listen to your gut.
Some changes you might find, after a few days’ deliberation, feel OK and actually make sense.
But there might be others that you can’t reconcile. And that’s OK too.
It’s YOUR name on the cover, and YOUR book. You have to be happy with what’s inside the pages.
Remember, editors are fallible humans too, and sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes it’s just that your point is being lost somehow (one of my editors calls this ‘not being on the page’ - as in, a key point is in your head as a writer but not being made clear enough in the writing), and a little bit of tightening in the writing can clarify things.
Often the changes you need to make are smaller than they first seem.
I’m sure you’ve read lots of articles about how to take feedback, how to deal with structural edits etc and the most important point is to sit with it and assimilate it for a few days before you do anything.
But in that process, I want you to remember that you know your book better than anyone else. So please do listen to your gut and if something doesn’t feel right, then don’t be afraid to explain why to your editor or agent.
As long as you have a respectful, open conversation with them, you should be able to find a resolution that everyone is happy with.
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