You’ve finished the first draft of your novel, and it’s time to put it out there for some feedback. You give it to your best friend and your mother, perhaps a former teacher who encouraged you along the way, and maybe the two people you most respect in your writers’ group. But there’s a small voice coming from your head telling you that you need an unbiased opinion, and every time you hear it, another voice in your head screams “Nooooo!” Sort of like the voice many people hear the first time they leave their child with a babysitter who isn’t a close friend or relative. And the comparison is an apt one. That manuscript is your child. You gave birth to it, nursed it, and coddled it. It is terrifying to put it out there into the world, where it can be ignored, insulted, or criticized, where people won’t realize that the things they don’t like or get about it are really, really cute, or better yet, signs of genius yet undiscovered. They just won’t understand it the way you do.
Guess what? You’re right. They won’t. They will play with your child only if they feel like it. They may leave your child on the bench … I mean, bookshelf … to be picked up only after all the other books have been chosen. They’ll ignore your child if they feel like it, drop it from the team of books on their bedside table, and they will most certainly talk about your child behind its back after it’s gone. That’s why it is imperative that you take that next step, that you send your manuscript, your baby, out into the world, to learn how to play with others without you keeping watch, holding its hand, making sure that it doesn’t fall down and skin its knee. You have to trust that it can face a bully and not run away crying, relying on you to protect it. It has to learn how to stand on its own.
At My Two Cents Editing, where I work on manuscript critiques as an associate editor, we get it. We’re writers ourselves. We know how hard it is to turn your child over to the hands of someone else. But having been through the process so many times ourselves, we know how crucial it is to approach the work with a caring but dispassionate eye. Your child is going to have to leave the safe home you have given it, the gentle, understanding audience of friends and family, and face a tougher, less sympathetic public. We love nothing more than helping you make sure that it is ready to take those next steps, so that it can thrive on its own.
For more information on My Two Cents Editing, and our services, visit mytwocentsediting.com.
Guess what? You’re right. They won’t. They will play with your child only if they feel like it. They may leave your child on the bench … I mean, bookshelf … to be picked up only after all the other books have been chosen. They’ll ignore your child if they feel like it, drop it from the team of books on their bedside table, and they will most certainly talk about your child behind its back after it’s gone. That’s why it is imperative that you take that next step, that you send your manuscript, your baby, out into the world, to learn how to play with others without you keeping watch, holding its hand, making sure that it doesn’t fall down and skin its knee. You have to trust that it can face a bully and not run away crying, relying on you to protect it. It has to learn how to stand on its own.
At My Two Cents Editing, where I work on manuscript critiques as an associate editor, we get it. We’re writers ourselves. We know how hard it is to turn your child over to the hands of someone else. But having been through the process so many times ourselves, we know how crucial it is to approach the work with a caring but dispassionate eye. Your child is going to have to leave the safe home you have given it, the gentle, understanding audience of friends and family, and face a tougher, less sympathetic public. We love nothing more than helping you make sure that it is ready to take those next steps, so that it can thrive on its own.
For more information on My Two Cents Editing, and our services, visit mytwocentsediting.com.
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