Someone I know who shall remain nameless recently finished writing a fictional manuscript. To my knowledge this is their first novel, at least it’s the first I’m aware of. I’ve been reading through it, grateful for the opportunity and enjoying the story as one does. Yet today I found myself struck with the weirdest feeling. I was proudly discussing the book in quite broad terms, covering the basis of the story as I mentioned this to someone else in passing, a completely unrelated person. To be specific I gave an overall impression of how great this book is. It hit me as odd that these lenient, positive and importantly forgiving words fell out of my mouth.
I don’t usually talk about my writing that way?
Up until that very moment I hadn’t actually been looking at this manuscript from my author’s point of view. I’d been a reader and nothing more. Today I donned the Jason Gale ‘Author’ hat, feel free to substitute ‘paranoid, self esteem crushing dictator’ if you like and there’s simply no turning back. This persona of mine seems to be a nit picking perfectionist, goody too shoes, expecting everything to be perfect and if not, then it must be absolute worthless drivel. My reader who is a sucker for the flow of a good story, felt satisfied to be swept along in the flowing plot and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. However now, the few grammatical, structural or dialogue faults seemed to leap to mind and it bugged me, big time. Why can’t I just enjoy the story and switch off the analytical stuff for a while?
I think as I’ve been writing so much over the last 12 months in particular, I seem to have lost touch with the basic premise that a good story is 90% there on its own. I’ve had many proof readers tell me they simply couldn’t put The Healing Truth down and read it almost non stop. Cool. How do I get the author to listen to that because he still thinks its not quite there.
I wish the author would relax a little and maybe let the reader takes the reins for a while.
In my present state of confusion, this war of positive and paranoid negativity, I can’t for the life of me work out if my new, unnamed project, is any good or not (no spoilers).
Sometimes it’s weird being me!
It’s good, alright! 😀
Mmmmm…interesting observation. I can honestly say the The Curing did it for me – swept me away, that is. Maybe really great writing is so engaging that you can’t help but forget about the nuts and bolts / behind the scenes parts of it. But it is amazing how a grammatical error or something else “not wuite right”in the story can jar you when you’re so engrossed in it.