Coping with the Stomach-Churning, Lump-o’-Coal Fearing Path to Publication Day
By Margaret Dilloway | April 7, 2015 |
Please welcome returning guest author Margaret Dilloway to Writer Unboxed today! Margaret is the author of Sisters of Heart and Snow, releasing TODAY! It’s a story about two estranged sisters who are inspired and brought together by reading the history of real-life 12th century samurai woman Tomoe Gozen. Said Booklist of the novel:
Spanning centuries, Dilloway’s intricate, multigenerational saga of repressive family dynamics offers a timeless look at the bonds of sisterhood.
Margaret is also the author of the middle grade fantasy novel Momotaro (Disney-Hyperion, 2016), as well as The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns and How to Be an American Housewife. She lives in San Diego with her three children, husband, and her personal trainer, a big Goldendoodle named Gatsby.
You can follow Margaret on her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter.
The Stomach-Churning, Lump-o’-Coal Fearing Path to Publication Day
Today I await the publication of my third book, Sisters of Heart and Snow, with a mix of pleasant anticipation and stomach-churning dread. A mix like it’s about to be Christmas morning and I’m hoping there will be a few brightly wrapped packages, but suspecting that there might just be fat lumps of coal waiting for me, too.
Why coal? As a writer, you work for years on a project, not knowing if it’ll ever be published. Dozens of drafts later, it’s finally good enough for a non-relative to read. By the time it’s out on bookstore shelves, it’s been parsed dozens of times—by your agent, your editor, the editorial board, the foreign rights agents, copy editors, sales and marketing and design teams. And since none of these professionals has called up the president of the publishing company during the year or two the book’s been in production to tell him stop the presses because you’re a horrible hack, you ought to be golden with confidence by the time readers actually get their hands on it. Right?
Nope! We still feel as vulnerable as newborn kittens, our eyes closed, handing off our book babies from the warmth of our fuzzy blankets out into the cold world. Its eyes are still closed! Be gentle.
So what is this coal I speak of? It’s the people who give you one-star reviews. It’s the cold journal review that tells you all the things you could have done better—and yes, maybe a couple of the points are correct, but there’s nothing you can do about them now. It’s easy to be run over by the great freight train of anxiety, to worry over each tidbit as relentlessly as my dog chews his rawhide, down to a dangerous choking nub.
I don’t much like this feeling.
To prepare for the Big Day, I’ve been compiling a list for how to deal with this negativity, asking other authors how they do it. Here are some ways to cope with the coal:
- Limit the reviews you read. Or have a friend read them first (I make my husband do the dirty work). If you happen to read one that pierces the heart, reread the good ones before moving on, as author Erika Marks does, “kind of like swigging something sweet to get the taste of a bad bite out of the mouth.”
- Phone a friend. Author Jan Ellison says, “It helps knowing we’re all in the same boat. So I share it with another writer friend immediately.” After a few minutes of commiseration and righteous indignation on your behalf, you can move on with your life.
- Remember that reading is subjective. Author Barbara Claypole White remarks, “I’m darkly quirky…and some people are never going to get my style.” Author Lisa Wingate agrees, “Book love is a little like romance. Sometimes people decide without really giving it a chance. Sometimes the chemistry’s not there.”
- Remember that most reviewers are not writers, and are not out to get you. One writer tells me that before she became a published author, she happily left three-star reviews for books she enjoyed, not knowing how skewing the author’s average lower might negatively affect sales.
- Shrug and move on, perhaps after employing one of the above coping mechanisms.
Let me expound on number 5 for a bit, because for a lot of people, including me, moving on is the hardest part. I actually have a diagnosed anxiety disorder, so have been working on this whole “moving on” thing for a long time, and finally found some practical advice that helped me.
Recently I watched the Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything. One of my favorite scenes is when Hawking lectures about his big black holes breakthrough. Some of the audience members storm out of the lecture hall when he’s done, visibly upset. One man stops and downright berates Hawking, telling him that his work is utter rubbish, the dumbest thing he’s ever heard.
Hawking doesn’t burst into tears or tell the guy that was an awfully mean thing to say. He doesn’t ignore all the other people congratulating him to focus on the one guy who disagreed. He knows that not everyone’s going to like his theory, and there’s not a blasted thing he can do about it.
So, as the man finishes his tirade and whirls around to exit, Hawking grins up at him from his wheelchair. “Was it something I said?”
Ha.
The reality is, you can no more control how others react to your work or what they say about it than you can control the sun. We can control how we react. That’s why I liked that scene in the movie so much.
Put it this way: If it’s raining and you need to take the dog for a walk, do you sit inside all day, berating the clouds, shaking your fist at the sky, telling the weather it’s stupid? Of course not—you know it wouldn’t do any good. You might dislike the rain and wish that it’d stop, but you know you’re not the Greek god of weather—you can’t control it. It’s the weather—you might as well command your dog to meow instead of bark. Sooner or later it’ll stop raining, and you’ll forget that it rained.
No, you throw on a rain coat and some boots and you deal with the rain while it lasts.
Getting angry at someone for having an opinion is about as productive as getting angry at rain for existing. Everything—and everyone—who is not you is out of your control.
Let’s say you get a bad review. You spend ten minutes fretting about it. Twenty fretting about it with a friend. Thirty more fretting about it with your Facebook friends. An hour fretting about it with your better half. A half hour fretting about it during the car pool, when your kid wonders why you’re so cranky. Congratulations—you’ve now relived the bad review a whopping five times, and gave it two and a half hours of your precious day. The person who wrote it only lived it once. Yikes. Why give someone who doesn’t matter such power? That’s not being very fair to yourself.
Wouldn’t it be better to take a deep breath, and realize that those words uttered really affect your reality no more than a little light rain?
The more you practice this—with every annoyance you come across, not just bad reviews—the easier it gets. For example, when I was in Japan recently, I found out that my feet are Sasquatchian by Japanese standards—the store I went to only had up to a size 8, and I wear a 10. The salesgirls tittered as I left. I heard them laughing and wondered briefly if my feelings ought to be hurt. But why should they? My feet are big. I’m also a foot taller than most of those women. That’s just how the genetics worked out. Heck, if I spoke Japanese better this is exactly what I would have told them, too. Maybe I’d been practicing letting go of other peoples’ reactions long enough, because I truly did not care.
Applying this attitude to writing, you know that you cannot write as a slave to your readers—not to the person who thinks your fiction should be more literary, or the person who thinks it should have a quicker plot; the person who thinks you should have fewer curse words; the person who complains about your shoddy research or the person who hates all your careful historical details. It’s impossible. Somebody, somewhere, is going to hate your work.
So the next time someone offers up an opinion, shrug your shoulders, say, “Meh, I could do without this rain, but I do have an umbrella,” and know that the raindrops will all, eventually, melt into the ground.
Have publication-day coping measures? The floor is yours.
Margaret Dilloway is the author of the new middle grade series MOMOTARO: XANDER AND THE LOST ISLAND OF MONSTERS (Disney Hyperion) and three women’s fiction novels. She lives in San Diego with her family and a big Goldendoodle named Gatsby. She teaches creative writing to middle schoolers and does developmental editing.
Love this post, Margaret! Such great advice! Congrats on your new book! I can’t wait to read it!
Not here yet, but when I am I’ll remember this advice. thanks!
Great post, Margaret! Love your attitude. Congratulations on the new novel. Wishing you great success!
Great advice here, Margaret. Of course this also applies to those pesky rejection letters writers get from agents and publishers. It’s hard to hear, and accept, but inevitable. Some things are just a rite of passage, and rejection in any form, from just about every imaginable source, seems to be the writer’s lot in life. It’s how we react to those rejections, well meaning advice, and poor reviews, that really matter. Focus on the positives and the negatives won’t seem so important.
Thanks for the reminder as I launch into another day of querying.
Love the positive thinking, Margaret. And congrats!
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Wonderful post, Margaret, thank you! I’m not published yet, but know that “Churning, Lump of Coal Fearing” feeling. Years ago, I had managed to get a show of my artwork at a prestigious gallery in the Hamptons, on Long Island. On “opening day” (a huge party put on by the gallery, with all the Hampton folk traipsing through to see my work) I received a congratulatory phone call from a friend who was truly a world-renowned artist. He asked me how I was doing, and I told him about the “churning, lump of coal fearing” feeling. He said, “Ah yes, I know that feeling. It never goes away. You feel as though you are hanging up there on the wall naked, right?” Yep, that was exactly right, warts and all.
You are exposing yourself by showing your art/publishing your book, and hoping that the world sees all the stuff that was in your heart and soul as you worked on it, and not the warts.
Bravo, and congratulations!
Margaret,
Congratulations on your book. It sounds intriguing. Since I’m a history nerd, Sisters of Heart and Snow is right up my alley. The other reason for your timely words? Today is my 3rd release day and I have the worst butterflies. I love the rain analogy…perfect and cleansing just thinking about it. Thank you for the “ahhh” moment this morning.
Have a great day, and again best wishes for your book!
Gina Conkle
Margaret-
I’ve been through the publication jitters with clients of my agency more than 1000 times. It has always puzzled me that despite the *good* reviews, fan e-mails, and royalty statements that once in a while an author will focus only on the one bad review, cranky letter or perceived error by their publisher.
Funny math, that. I’ll send them to your advice in future. Thanks.
Terrific information Margaret and best to you and your book on the shelves. So many of us are concerned with getting to your position, we’re not thinking of what will happen when we land there. Your post is that of a Butterfly, the double-edged sword, encouragement versus the jitters. I’m making a copy and passing it out to my “Getting Published” group Thursday night (with proper notations). What we all have to look forward to :) Perfect timing and thank you. Congratulations!
These are great tips Margaret and so timely for me. My third book releases from WaterBrook/PRH in exactly two weeks from today.
TWO WEEKS!
I’m already all a’jitter–have seen one negative review and quite a few good ones to wash it down with–but mostly very happy.
Before I was ever published I learned a thing from Diana Gabaldon about coping. “Not all books are for all readers.” I’ve tried to approach the inevitable negative reviews with that rational attitude. There’s no book gonna be universally loved.
PS: I find your new book cover very intriguing!
Your #5 leads to me to suspect you’ll appreciate a quote I gleaned from Byron Katie. “When you argue with reality you lose, but only 100% of the time.” ;)
I loved your Steven Hawking reference when I watched this movie I made me laugh. He is so real. People will break you down but sometimes they are telling you the truth too for next time and is is good to listen, so that you can change, not every thing but just a little. But you also have to remember you got published, you have followers, and people love your work so you are doing something right. So just click the exit button on their comment and move on.
“Remember that most reviewers are not writers, and are not out to get you. One writer tells me that before she became a published author, she happily left three-star reviews for books she enjoyed, not knowing how skewing the author’s average lower might negatively affect sales”
Margaret, I enjoyed your Unboxed Moment very much, but the above had me shaking my head. So it’s 5 Stars or don’t bother? What happens when (to you and you alone) it’s 3 Stars? It’s a good book, not a great one, and certainly not (again as IMO) the bees’ knees Just keep it to yourself, please? I’m confused. And it’s not the first time I’m confused, either. Confusion seems to be the uniform of the day most days. lol
Again, thanks for your insights, and should I ever get that dreaded 3 Star, I’ll know I have only myself to thank for Karmic payback!
Gentle, Wise, Anxious Margaret:
We share a pub date — to say your post is timely would be, oh, you know.
I loved this:
…”you know that you cannot write as a slave to your readers”
This is the paradox. We do not write for ourselves — I’ve likened that elsewhere to scribbling for ghosts. The so-called contract with the reader does oblige us to be clear, to be honest, to play fair, etc.
But who is that airy, ineffable reader?
In his wonderful book on acting, The Presence of the Actor, Joseph Chaikin noted that Shakespeare wrote for kings, Shaw wrote for philosophers. Chaikin never went onstage without imagining Martin Luther King, Jr. in the audience. I think that kind of personification of the reader can be wise — though daunting. I need to live up to my best reader, the reader I believe will get what I’m TRYING to do. He can still fault my execution, but won’t go off on me with some fundamental lack of awareness as to what I was hoping to achieve.
But what if our heroes do not like our books? How crushing. That’s where your analysis to romance comes in. I agree that romance/courtship best resembles the connection between writer and reader, or book and reader.
We’ve all been smitten with someone who rejected us. We’ve found a way to get over it, move on, etc. We may have even come to a deeper understanding of who we are, our honest merits. Our voices as writers have been forged by what we’ve been through, what we’ve suffered, what we’ve loved, what we’ve lost. I tell myself: Own that, and accept that not everyone is going to think you’re the hottest target in the room.
Last, I always try to remember that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the best solution to the anxiety surrounding the latest book is to get to work on the next.
Best of luck with Sisters of Heart and Snow. It sounds like a stunner.
Ah, Margaret, wisdom just when I needed it! My second book pubs in two months, and I just read an early review–one that stung. And yes, I have relived it several times today. Now? Just … done. Thank you!