Whenever You’re Ready

You’ve been working hard forever. You’ve written all the words, then you rewrote them, then you wrote them again, but differently, and each time you improve the work by leaps and bounds. Surely, you’re ready. It’s time. Go get published already. Attach an agent, find a producer, make your dreams a reality! Hurry up, what are you waiting for? 

Are you sure, though? Are you really ready? Is your work at the professional level you want it at? How can you be certain? 

I don’t know about you, but I have been doing this awhile, and I see a lot of peers rush to the finish line. I get it, I’m always chomping at the bit to get things done, but (and I couldn’t resist wording it like this) ready or not matters. Let’s dive into why. 

Are You an Imposter? 

Writing is hard work. I write novels, and that’s a lot of hard work. I write scripts, and that’s a lot of hard work. I write these blogs, and that’s still hard work (though, admittedly, less). The best writers make it look effortless. The adventures they take you on are so much fun. 

When I read something fun, impactful, something that speaks to my soul, I get inspired like nothing else. When I do, I want to write all the things! I want to get that feeling out of me, and share it with the world as fast as I possibly can. 

But…

Something inside me waves this big, pesky yellow flag. 

I don’t know why, but something isn’t right. I want so badly for this negging feeling to go away when I have a new draft of something. It’s probably imposter syndrome. I’m resisting because some inner part of me is gainsaying my knowledge and abilities. 

It’s not imposter syndrome. 

I can tell you this because I succinctly discovered imposter syndrome for the first time after I published my first novel (please check it out – you’ll love it!) People wanted to chat about my book. They were eager to discuss it! They wanted more. They had questions about characters, opinions on plot points, and they had feelings. People had fun reading it! 

In those moments, I couldn’t believe they were talking about my book. They must be lying. Maybe my wife paid them all to react this way, then gave them talking points. In those moments, I felt like an imposter, disguised as an author. 

The yellow flag, that’s not imposter syndrome. It’s something else. 

It’s instinct. It’s your subconscious, and it knows something you don’t, because it’s seen something you haven’t. Yet. 

It’s Not the Same as Taste

This is so important, I gave it a heading. 

That instinct, that yellow flag: it’s not taste. Taste is well described in a quote by Ira Glass, in which he describes how you want to build skills until your work matches your taste. What I’m talking about is similar, but… it’s not the same.  

This is more than brushing up against taste. 

How to Know When the Time is Right

Like in love, you just know. 

This annoying sentiment is true for love, but it’s not the same for your writing. The problem is that once you set out to accomplish some writing, you’ll next want to publish it. Or in the case of scripts, gain heat. This is where I see writers sprinting forward all the time. 

I did this as well, but I was fortunate. I had no access to great industry talent in my early stages of writing, so I couldn’t have sent them my work, even if I had wanted to. Instead, I took to contests and paid pitches. These provided me a sense of where I stood in the competitive world of writing. It wasn’t a perfect indicator; art is subjective, but you enter enough contests and go nowhere, your instinct seems like it really knows something you should be paying attention to. 

With books, this option wasn’t on the table. A book is a mighty beast to read, and getting notes on a book can be costly. Luckily, I have friends that love to read, and they love me, so I was able to convince them with nothing but my charming blue, pleading eyes. 

My book is ready. I don’t know what else I could change to make it better. 

My script is ready. I’ve done all the things and people will love it. 

Yet, somewhere deep in my heart of hearts, I had the nagging voice, the yellow flag, and you will too. 

Do not ignore this flag!

Unlike self-doubt, which shall not be trusted, your instinct is going to be correct on this matter. Your work is likely not ready. So how do you ascertain this information? You need to find someone who knows more than you. You need to get notes. If the notes are challenging, they are probably extremely important. The more challenging a note, the more important it’s likely to be. Do not avoid these notes. Tackle them like you just spilled red wine on a white rug – immediately, and with as much vigor as you can muster. 

Those challenging notes are the same aspects of your book that your instincts are flagging. 

One of my more annoying notes on The Stone of Despair was about character motivation in a specific section of the story. A section I re-wrote over, and over, and over. The first few times I wrote it, my instincts were going crazy. This doesn’t work. Why, I would ask myself, but no answer would come. I finally got notes. 

I’ll talk more about it at the end if you’re curious. 

We’ve analyzed and separated a few of the feelings that writers must overcome in order to make great work. Self-doubt (combat this by skill-building), distaste (combat this by skill-building), and that yellow-flag waving instinct (combat this with notes). 

What happens if you ignore your instinct? 

Move Fast and Break Things

People respond to passion, and if you’re passionate enough to ignore your gut and go for the gold, or worse, to ignore your notes and go for the gold, you will get attention. Literary agents will hear your excited pitch and, with curiosity, crack open your work. Publishers will take a look. 

They will have the same notes for you. 

Well, actually, they’ll have entirely different notes for you, all designed to solve the same problems you failed to tackle. 

And ultimately, they’ll pass on your book, or your script. You want to know why? It’s such a simple answer. 

Let’s say I’m a publisher. I have two scripts. Romantasy. They’re both very steamy, they both have great world-building, and they’re both in need of a solid line-edit. The writing can be improved in more than a few places, but I like the story in both. Now let’s say you’re the author of one of them, and I get to the same spot you were given challenging notes on. I didn’t like the section. It didn’t work. But your direct competition had NO sections that didn’t work. 

In both novels, there’s room for improvement, but those are quality of life improvements. Both authors wrote a novel, but only one did their homework. They worked it until there were no meaningful notes left to get. 

And their novel will get published before yours. 

You’ve also made it harder to go back to that agent or publishing company. “I fixed the novel,” you might say, but my burning question will be, “Why didn’t you do that before you sent it to me?” 

And I’m going to come up with an answer. “You went fast because you thought I wouldn’t notice, or that I wouldn’t care.” 

That’s a bit insulting, definitely precocious. You want to work with me on selling art, and you don’t think I’m smart enough to realize you skipped some steps? Get out of here. I want to work with someone who does their job, so me and my team can spend time doing ours. 

People that work in story read thousands of stories. That’s their job! Read thousands of stories, and tell me you can’t pick out where you felt strengths and weaknesses in writing. 

Now, there are always exceptions, and always times where a publisher or agent or executive will take on work that needs notes. Where there’s lots of promise in the work, and they decide they’re willing to put your feet to the fire, but ask yourself this: what slim odds are you playing with? 

Yes, if you stand in the middle of a highway, there’s a chance you won’t get hit by a vehicle, but I don’t like your odds. 

This is why you need to trust that instinct. Hone it. Listen to it. Let it guide you. 

The status symbol you gain by getting an agent or getting an interested party isn’t worth spoiling a first impression over if you fail. There’s virtually no benefit as a writer to moving fast and breaking things. 

It takes an insane amount of time to get an awesome working draft of a novel or a script ready to go. A LOT OF TIME. But that time will pay off, because that writing will be something people will talk about. They’ll want to read it. 

Case Study: The Stone of Despair 

The most challenging section of The Five Cursed Kingdoms: The Stone of Despair was near the beginning, when Vidalm and Dranzull go to Bosbro. 

Bosbro was important. My protagonist was on a fetch quest, which can be a relatively linear event until you throw curveballs at them. Vidalm has not had a chance to carve out good standing among his team. He’s actively kicked the hornet’s nest twice in the novel, and the adventure was only just beginning. 

My many solutions all had the same issue though: Vidalm’s motivations for following Seybanno to Bosbro all sucked. My first ten options all made Vidalm look like an idiot. Or worse, like he was being intentionally stupid in order to garner power, or prove himself. It didn’t fit with the character in the rest of the book. 

I really like how this section was tackled. It was Sabcha who gave me the answers. It was actually a different note about Sabcha and Tarrel that really made everything click. 

Both my main readers found it hard to differentiate the two in my early drafts. Tarrel and Sabcha were always the women they currently are now, in my imagination, but on the page, not so much. So I went through scene by scene, and really lived this adventure through their eyes. 

And the minute Sabcha wakes up, and Vidalm has left for Bosbro, I understood what Vidalm had done. He had betrayed them. 

When you read the section now, that’s the same concern Vidalm has. It is the kind of concern, on an all-important quest, that you simply cannot shrug off. 

And the Bosbro scenes finally, finally worked. 

So then I got notes saying the beginning wasn’t working, and I cried, and I moaned, and I grumbled, but I got the fuck back to work AGAIN and took things apart, even though I believed I was done. 

Because there’s one more lesson to teach in this post. 

You’re Not Done Until There’s No More Meaningful Notes

My instinct that the book wasn’t ready was gone after I fixed up Sabcha, Tarrel, and Bosbro. I was ready. But I got more notes. 

That’s frustrating. Frustrating is actually quite the understatement. It’s devastating when you’re so close to the end and someone you trust comes along and is like, “now that all of the glaring errors are fixed, here’s a new glaring error that was there the whole time.”

Fuck!

My same advice applies. You ignore notes at this stage to your detriment, and to the story’s detriment. Fix those notes! 

I don’t care how hard you’ve worked, how much time you’ve put in, how close you thought you were to the finish line, fix the damn notes. 

Because you’ll be extremely glad you did. 

Writing is easy. Writing well is difficult. Writing excellent, professional work is extreme. Few people can do it. For me, I’m always striving for excellence, and it’s always painful to achieve, but it’s always worth the struggle in the end. 

You’ll know you’re ready, because your work is EXCELLENT. 

Now show those notes who’s the boss around here.