Your Baby is Ugly!!!
Most writers fear two things. One is the inability to write, a.k.a “writer’s block.” The other is that your publisher calls your baby, i.e. the manuscript you just submitted, ugly.
Let’s start with the last first. Being insecure because I don’t have a brand and am not yet the second coming of Tom Clancy or John Grisham, I’m not blessed with a publisher who has a horde of editors sitting in the wings, just waiting for the chance to help me out. Instead, I have to submit is what I call a 90% work, i.e. one that is “publishable” – my word.
That means the story has to believable and the characters interesting enough to keep the reader’s interest so that an editor can help you hone it into the final product. Every writer has an editor. It is just a fact of life. And every editor has a proofreader to clean up the stuff the writer and editor missed and to fact check the book. Yes, even novels have “facts” and I use enough of them to make the book realistic.
A no means they didn’t like it. In other words, my baby is ugly which means the book is not going to get published by that publisher. The other options are to look for another publisher or pay for the privilege or put something out on Amazon myself. So, it behooves me to put out the best possible manuscript and then have a thick skin because the criticism is going to come. Take it, learn from it, improve and be better the next time.
On to point two – the inability to write. I’ve not experienced writers block. For me, there are times I wrestle with a scene for hours, even days before I sort it out in my mind. Then, it is easier to write. I’ve never suffered from writer’s block. In fact, I’m the other way, I feel guilty when I am not writing when I know I should be!!!
Marc Liebman
March 3rd, 2013