I Am An Author, Hear me Roar!

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with an author you’ve probably discovered we are, for the most part, a weird and wacky bunch. Our inspiration comes from many different places. We each have a different thing that sparks our creativity. It matters little where it springs from, what matters is how you acknowledge it and what you do with it. Do you leave it to sit idly or do you grab a notebook and scribble down those ideas before they flee for places unknown?

Whether you’re telling stories inspired by real-life experiences or some wacky interpretation of an old myth, as long as you’re doing it that’s all that matters. Fear and feelings of self-doubt can keep us from sharing what we’ve written. It happens often and to all of us. Nothing will be perfect, ever, if you’re striving for perfection you will be disappointed. Why do I say this? Because we are human and we make mistakes. Errors get missed and plot holes occur. It happens to all of us. Strive to make your work the best you can and don’t sweat the small things. I have a little party if I upload my manuscript and Amazon tells me it has found less than five errors. Heck, less than ten errors. If you’ve written 70 or 80,000 words, even twenty errors aren’t that many in the grand scheme of things. My friend’s mother will forever remind me of an error in one of my books where I left the ‘R’ out of crouch so my character was landing in a couch. Mistakes happen, that one will always be remembered, I even dedicated a recent book to her for always reminding me of it. It was a funny mistake. Don’t sweat the small stuff it isn’t worth the stress.

If you fear the reaction of readers—if you hide away scribbling your stories in the dark corner of your closet—how will you ever know if they’re any good? How will you learn what it is you might need to improve upon to make your work even better? Not everyone is going to like your stories, we all have different tastes and you can’t please everyone. If a review seems harsh, try and look at it with a certain amount of perspective. It’s a difficult thing to do because your work is very personal to you, but if you can take a step back and look at the review or critique impartially you may find something in there that can help. Perhaps you can dismiss it as a review from someone who simply isn’t into the genre you’re writing and realize it doesn’t affect the quality of what you’ve written.

Reviews can be harsh and a lot of authors don’t have thick skin, we are a sensitive, creative ilk and when a review is negative we tend to react with emotion and lash out. Or sit in a corner and weep about how we’re never going to write again. I went so far at one point as to throw my laptop in the trashcan.

Share your work, find author groups, writer groups, even beta readers, and share what you’ve written. Let others see your creativity. If it isn’t up to par then find out what will make it better. Unless your friends and family are the rare sorts who will tell you the absolute truth, I don’t recommend using them to review or critique. You want honesty, you want to know what is good and what isn’t, you don’t want sugar coating to spare your feelings. As nice as that is, it won’t help you in the long run. There are a lot of online writing sites, Inkitt, Wattpad, and others where you can share your work for free and find folks who will review it for you. I would strongly suggest staying away from sites like Dreame, Webnovel, and others that promise you if you post your work you’ll make boatloads of cash and be rich (There are other reasons why you should avoid these sites but that’s a post in itself). You’re looking to find out what readers like and don’t like about your work so you can improve and make your stories the best they can be. You need to walk before you can run.

Don’t bow to your fear of rejection, if you do then you might spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been. Even if your writing is simply a hobby, share it. Put it out in the world and see what happens. Don’t give up on a dream out of fear of the unknown.