I’ve been thinking a lot about this advice recently. It’s a favorite in my writing circles. Bad review making you question your skills as a storyteller? “Protect the work.” A lot of outside commitments eating into your writing time? “Protect the work.” Industry changes or news getting you down? “Protect the work.” (I think it’s Susan Elizabeth Philips’s mantra, but I may be wrong about that.)
Like all advice, it’s easier said than done. And like a lot of advice, it’s possible to convince yourself that you’re following it when there is nothing further from the truth.
What does it really mean? “Protect the work?”
- It means ignoring bad reviews. Just because someone didn’t like a particular aspect of your book doesn’t mean you did it poorly. Nor does it mean it’s your job to fix that aspect. It’s their problem. I read on a blog the other day about a speech that writer James Rollins gave at Thrillerfest (pardon the hearsay, but the lesson is there, even in parable form): “He’d read the reviews for his first book and noticed that many of them commented on lack of characterization. So he was trying to work on the characterization. He submitted the manuscript to the editor, who saw some of the characterization attempts and asked him what he was doing. He told her, and she said that his great strength was making a book a page turner and to stop worrying about what the reviewers were finding wrong.” That’s protecting the work. Do what you do best. What one person hates about your work will be another person’s favorite part. Don’t try to be all things to all people, or you won’t please anyone.
- It means finding a way around the industry “rules.” Ignore the rules, if that works for you. Or use them to your advantage. Or find a way to bend them to your will. But realize that the work comes first. What do you write? What do you write well? Those should be your first questions. After that should come the question of what the industry wants and how best to give it to them. You may not have an answer to that question. That’s okay. Because it’s more important to write something you love that the industry doesn’t know it wants yet, than to write something you don’t love — because, trust me, the industry won’t want that. They can smell it, and they stay away. Protect the work by putting it first, and then finding a way to bend it to the industry’s needs second. This is the best article I’ve ever read on the subject. It’s what the “branding” folks are always going on about. Find out what really speaks to you about your work. Chances are, you’ll find a way to fit it into the industry’s flavor-of-the-month.
- It means taking the tough route for the sake of the book. Even if it means waiting a little while, or turning down a chance to do those revisions because it would mean turning your book into something you don’t want it to be. Not taking the contract because it would put your work in the hands of someone who doesn’t deserve to have it. Sticking it under the bed until you have the ability to do the premise justice. Take heart. You aren’t the first writer to do this, and you won’t be the last.
- It means a dozen flavors of these things, but they all boil down to the same point:
They are lying. They are all lying because if you put what you want in your story, if you put in your story what it needs, if you dig deep and write honestly and make it work, then you’ll find that it does — that people who claimed they’d “never” like XYZ in fact do, that a market that didn’t seem open to ABC in fact is, and that those reviewers/readers/agents/editors will actually surprise themselves.
I’ve been in several conversations with several writers over the past few days and all are questioning their careers, the state of the industry, the words of critics, their future steps. And as I’ve listened and responded and tried my best to give advice, I keep hearing the same words over and over again in the back of my head. Protect the work. Protect what makes your writing your writing. Does that mean not signing the contract? Not making the revisions? Not going online? Does it mean regrouping? Retracing? Starting over? Accepting a setback? Well, no one said this would be easy.
Protect the work means to be honest about what you are writing. Be honest with yourself, with your audience, and with your story. Everything else comes later. Protect the work.
(Yes, this was another self-slap.)
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