That’s the best advice I can give to anyone pursuing publication. It may seem like an easy piece of advice, but it may be the most complicated. Listening is what changed my path from writer to author.
Like many other writers, I decided to enter my manuscripts into contests. And like everyone else, I had the dreamy eyed hope that I’d final and that the brilliant agent or editor judging the contest would fall in love with my pages.
Let’s just say that isn’t exactly what happened. In fact, it’s far from what happened. The first couple of contests I entered, I scored near last if not dead last.
Yep, that’s right—I stunk so badly that skunks held their breath.
I had judges who scored me as low as they could without going into negative numbers, all without comments. I had a judge who told me she’d be okay if my heroine died. I’ll admit, that one made me cry—a lot. But then I had a handful of judges who gave me okay scores, but what I loved is that they gave me a goldmine in comments.
You have a fabulous voice, they’d say, but you’re overusing ‘to be’ verbs and you tell way too much. Have you taken a class on showing? Maybe on body language?
One judge went as far to add links for online classes and books that she thought could be helpful.
Now I had a choice to make: I could listen or ignore the comments. I loved my story—loved. It hurt to think that someone didn’t love it as much as I did. My initial reaction was to discount the judges; to say they were wrong.
But the judges were right. I used a passive voice and I told more than I showed. So I listened. I took the online classes. I read the recommended books and became a sponge; learning about the craft called writing. By combining all of that knowledge with my love of storytelling, I wrote a new manuscript.
Now there are different types of listening. While working on my new manuscript, I joined a critique group. I had thought after living through the criticism of contest judges that I would easily be able to withstand criticism from a face-to-face critique group.
That palm sweating anxious feeling I would get when I saw the e-mail from the contest coordinator was nothing like attending my first meeting. My stomach dropped out of my body in the parking lot and my throat practically swelled shut.
My critique partners told me their thoughts on my story and I swear, I was so nervous, I didn’t hear a word they said. The next day, I got out the comments they made on my manuscript and reviewed them.
Sometimes, their comments stung. Why? Pride I guess. I wanted to be right, but in the end, some of their comments were spot on. So I developed a rule, no making a decision on my critique partner’s comments for twenty-four hours.
I found that if I gave the comments time to settle into my brain, into my soul, that I could remove the emotional sting. Just because I may not like the comment, it doesn’t mean that it is wrong.
So, we’ve covered listening to strangers (judges) and listening to friends (critique partners). The most important listening is listening to your instincts.
While comments from critique partners and judges may very well be valid, there are times that their thoughts are not what is best for your story. So if you are caught wondering whether you’re just being stubborn in not taking people’s advice or if, instead, you are following your instincts ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you jumping to an emotional response? Did you give yourself time to process before assessing whether or not it works for your story?
- Is more than one person telling you the same thing?
- Have you studied the craft of writing? Are you reading other works within your genre?
- Have you tried out their advice to see if it improves your manuscript?
In the end, I’m a firm believer in listening to your instincts. Storytelling is a gift. The instinct on how to tell those stories is ingrained into those of us who enjoy writing. Learn to listen to that inner voice. Don’t let others tell you aren’t capable of writing a story or that you’ll never get published. Those are comments we should never listen to.
Listen to that small voice inside of you that says you have a story to tell. Listen to that voice that says that you can.
