faith and voodoo

Written on Friday, May 16, 2008 by haleigh

So today I let a friend.....let's call him Mark....read the first three chapters of my WIP. I'd submitted these chapters to a critique group, gotten good feedback and made revisions, so I was feeling pretty damn good about myself.

Mark felt differently.

I won't repeat everything he said, but the words "sophomoric," "suck," "start over," "implausible," "unpolished," "unbelievable," and "start over" stick out in my mind.

(Notice I really remember the phrase "start over.").

So parts of what he said was very good criticism, and parts of his advice I'll take. Parts of it just pissed me off. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he's right.

And that's okay.

My writing is not perfect. It's not polished. It's not ready for the New York Times Best Seller list. But I started writing 14 short months ago, and it's a hell of a lot more polished now than it was then. And that's what my comparison should be, right? There's a reason 80% of the authors of NYT Best Sellers are in their 60's!

Writing isn't something that happens overnight, or that we're instantly good at. Sure, there are those success stories of people who rocketed to the top of the best seller list with their debut novel at the age of 22, but for the rest of us, it's all about hard work, dedication, and faith.

It's the faith in myself part that I'm running a bit short today. Which sucks, because I was on such a roll before he got started! (halfway - woohoo!)

Anyone else get a figurative (or literal!) knee in the balls this week?

Anyone else use the voodoo doll gadget from Google desktop? (notice where on my Mark doll the voodoo pins are clustered). The doll sits on your screen. You can assign a name and add a little pin every time they piss you off. Very nifty for those pesky co-workers.

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