Your Book Is Not Your Baby

I know we all love the analogy that our novels are our children (hello, third trimester jokes). And as creative people, there's a natural instinct to want to protect your creation. It's yours, after all, and we pour a little piece of our soul into the work we do.

But your book is really not your baby, and I'll tell you why:

When someone calls your baby ugly, there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, you could punch that person in the face. But when somebody says "dude, your kid has a nose the size of a grapefruit," you can't actually fix your kid (short of getting them a nose-job I guess, but plastic surgery's kind of a drastic option...).

Whereas, when someone says "dude, your book gets totally boring in the middle and doesn't pick up again until the murderer busts through the window ten pages before the climax," you CAN fix that. Maybe it will take time and effort and a lot of ruthless deleting, but you need to do it.

"You can't make everyone happy," you say. "Some readers won't like my book no matter what!" And that's true. But if you trust your beta readers/critique group/whoever is giving you this advice, or if 10 of the 12 people who read your book say they totally lost interest during that long romantic dinner scene that you love to pieces, you should LISTEN TO THEM!

Because unlike babies, whose job is to eat and poop, your book's job is to entertain your readers. Your book's job is to make them forget they're reading a book; make them forget about their own lives and problems and babies for a moment (though, you know, not for too long or the whole poop thing becomes an issue) and get lost in your world.

They're not going to be able to do that if you don't make said world as perfect as possible. So if that involves heavy-duty plastic surgery, then you need to break out the scalpel.

It's natural to love your work. You should love your work, and you should be proud of it. But don't be afraid to chop it to pieces, either.