Saturday, November 08, 2014

When It All Looks Like Crap

Right now I'm at the worst part of the revision process with The Steel Breeds True -- the point where everything looks like crap, and I'm starting to wonder if the story itself can even be salvaged, or if it would be better to just toss the whole thing and try something else. That dreadful moment when I fear that if I do offer it for sale, everyone will laugh and point.

It's a longstanding problem for authors. I remember several of my favorite authors telling about coming to a point in the writing of a novel when they felt as if it was the biggest pile of crap ever gathered in a single place, and were seriously considering giving up on it. Yet they all persevered and often the novel in question turned out far better than they feared -- in some cases, even won awards (back when awards still meant something, and hadn't been politicized into worthlessness).

But all of those writers had one thing going for them -- the knowledge that their work would receive editorial oversight. If it really was as bad as they feared, if it were so stupid and badly written that everyone would laugh and point, it would never reach the shelves. The editor would either reject it outright or require substantial revisions to bring the work up to a presentable standard.

However, with the rise of indie publishing, authors who are going that route don't have the safety net of editorial oversight. They can hire an editor, but that requires money, and when you're first starting out, the availability of the necessary funds isn't a given. And of course you have to be sure that the freelance editor you've hired is familiar with the genre you're publishing in, and is willing to understand your vision of the work you're trying to write rather than imposing their tastes and views of what it ought to be. You do have the option of firing them if it doesn't work out, but there's always the risk that you won't realize it isn't working out, especially if they're pleasant to work with -- after all, this person is an expert, so there's a tendency to defer to their opinions even when your gut is telling you that their advice is taking the novel in the wrong direction.

If hiring a freelance professional editor simply isn't in your budget, there's also the option of getting it looked over on a volunteer basis by a trusted beta reader. You want someone you can rely upon to have a good eye for problems, but not to try to take the story over and force it into their mold. This person doesn't have to be a writer -- sometimes a person who is just a very avid reader can make the best beta reader, for the simple reason that they don't try to rewrite the story for you, but instead will be able to identify the places where they lost interest or became confused.

The worst situation is when you can't afford to hire a professional and can't seem to drum up any interest in being a beta reader among the people you feel comfortable in approaching about it. Because then you really have only two options -- muddle through as best as you can and trust your gut as to when it's ready to put up, or put it away. And there are arguments in favor of both. The argument for the first route is that at least you put up something, and if it gets a bad reception on the market, you always have the option of either rewriting it and republishing it (something which is particularly easy with e-books). The argument for the second is that putting up a bad book has a very real potential to damage your brand in a way that can be very hard to overcome with future books.


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