A Spirit of Openness

There are so many qualities that are important to the career writer, but one of the most critical may be the spirit of openness.

Unless you're self-publishing, the process of bringing a book to fruition is far more of a collaborative venture than you might imagine. The term "submission" is apt, for when you start submitting your project, whether it's to an agent you hope will represent it or an editor you want to champion and acquire it, you're in a position of stepping back from your own words and listening to other points of view, based on the professional's experience.

Some of what these folks have to say will smack hard against the wall of your resistance. Whether it's because the suggestion contradicts your original vision or because your subconscious is screeching that making the requested changes will be a heck of a lot of work, this reaction (I call it the "This editor's a complete moron!" moment) is a predictable, even instinctive part of the revision process. And whether or not you'll make it in the publishing world depends a great deal on how you find a way to deal with it.

Early in my writing journey, I had a huge problem with taking direction. Ego-involved with the work as I was, I was terribly myopic when it came to any perceived criticism. This only began to change for me when I started rereading contest judges' feedback many months after I originally received it. Shockingly, I realized that in a lot of (though not all) instances, the judge was right on target, or at least that his/her suggestions pointed out a deficiency I might correct by some other means. Attempting to learn from this, I started to allow myself to react, however negatively I needed to, to disappointments to get my ego out of the way, and then re-reading comments a few weeks or months later to glean whatever wisdom I could from the suggestions.

Cue forward a few years, and lucky me! I'd sold to a New York publishing house, where I didn't often have the luxury of weeks or (especially) months to shove my ego out of the way. At that point, I was receiving my most significant editorial input via phone, where it is frowned upon (to put it mildly) to throw a tantrum and call the person on the other end of the conversation an idiot. So I began taking careful notes, promising to consider or try out all suggestions, and then getting off the phone to wail and gnash my teeth or call a long-suffering friend to gripe about how my agent/editor "didn't get it." I put a strict five-minute limit on the bitching portion of those calls.

And then I moved directly to the discovery stage, where I realized that, for the most part, the person who'd given me this advice really did have some great insights into what readers want to see. This isn't to say that I went with every suggestion. I didn't and still don't. But I do take time to think through every one, and often, I'll "test drive" the idea and see how it works out. Just this past week, I've done so, even though this particular opinion utterly conflicted with my initial instincts.

I did promise to try it out on the first chapter, however, and darn it all, I could almost immediately see that it was a great suggestion, even though it cost me dozens of hours of extra work. Will my agent and others ultimately agree it was a good choice? I have no idea, but I know that in making those changes, I also improved other story elements that I'm 100% certain made this proposal more viable. If I'd been unwilling to risk trying something different, I would never have found my way to these new elements.

There's something else to be gained as well, from opening yourself up to the spirit of colleagiality. In doing so, you make the publishing pro part of the team, someone with even more of a vested interest (other than the obvious financial aspects) in fighting for your book's success. Since we're all on the same team anyway, The Team of Creating, Producing, and Marketing a Successful Book, it's a great thing, not a failure, to get as many people on board with it as possible.

That myth you might have stuck in your head about the misanthropic lone writer in the ivory tower? That's rarely the way things work out in real life. Most successful writers understand they're only one factor in the formula and they'd better darned well listen to their peeps.

So how about the rest of you? Can you think of any changes you initially resisted that turned out to be a great help? How do you put your ego aside to deal with criticism?