By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about
gaining distance from our books. I
really feel that’s vital to both editing them effectively, gaining a critical
perspective of them, and learning from negative feedback.
One way to gain distance from our books
is to write another book. The authors I
know who wrote one book (and were traditionally published), fell into this
“only child syndrome” with their book…they helicopter-parented it and were
genuinely hurt over poor reviews. Hurt
to the point where they were immobilized and couldn’t move forward with writing
again.
Another way to cultivate this distance is
to adopt the most businesslike attitude we can about our books. Because, if
we’re sticking with publishing as a career…it is
a business. I think that’s where writers
got off-track so many times in the past.
We didn’t understand our contracts, we didn’t understand the nature of
the industry, we didn’t understand our responsibility to our book…which is to
promote ourselves as a brand and work on the next story.