The Op-Ed Page In Your WIP

We've all heard or said it at least once:

"Well, I talked to an editor/publisher/agent/author/previously-innocent-bystander and they said that I should delete my whole first chapter and start with the second!"

"Say what you will, but my grandmother/mother/sister/teacher/professor/previously-innocent-bystander said that my novel was by far the best and most accomplished work they'd seen on Amish vampire chick-lit in their entire lifetimes. They guaranteed they'd buy it."

"I showed my novel to -insert previously innocent bestselling author's name- and they told me it was good and then they marked it up with so many red pen marks that it now looks like a Ritz cracker box."

Try to guess what these three comments have in common.

You got it - Opinions. Yours, mine, other people's. Someone hates your book, someone loves your book. You hate your book, you love your book. Some random guy walking his spindly-legged pinscher down the street thinks your book is boring and should start with a gunfight.

"But wait," you try to explain. "I write romance and if I started with a gunfight, then they wouldn't have that touching scene in the park! And if I cut the whole first chapter, you'd never know that she was an orphan because her mom died in childbirth and her dad was that unfortunate worker guy in Jurassic Park who first got eaten by the dinosaur!"

There was a time when I listened to everyone's opinions about my stories.

And I mean everyone.

I showed my work to whoever would sit still long enough to read the first three chapters. My poor family got so many different drafts of the same story that I think they eventually forgot where the plot was going in the first place. I asked a few authors at writers conferences to have a look at my writing. My friend's mom who was an English major looked at it. My mom. My grandmother.

Everyone - and I do mean everyone - had a different opinion on it.

"I think you need to start here," one author told me at a conference, flipping to page 62. "Just go ahead and cut out all the beginning stuff."

The English Major Friend's Mom didn't like how I tended to use fragments. In sentences such as this:

Silence.

Apparently, that was not a sentence. She used her red marker all over my book. So much, actually, that I nearly burst into tears and gave up writing.

With Miss Match, one editor told me she thought it was good, but I needed more Bible in it. Another editor told me to make it spicier, to add some sexual tension.

Um. Okay. Talk about conflicting opinions!

So, who do you listen to when everyone has a different idea of what your book should be like? Editors? Your mom? The English major? The guy walking his dog?

I was at a conference several years ago and I got a chance to ask my all-time favorite author, Francine Rivers, that very question. She said that there are only so many corrections she could suggest or someone else could suggest before it ceases to become your book and becomes that other person's book.

Does that mean you never listen to what other people think?

Of course not. But listen with an open mind - i.e. listen with the ability to let some of those opinions float away. While the English major's opinion would have been a good one to listen to if I were writing a research paper, it was probably not the best person to listen to in writing a novel. But, if an editor suggested that I changed the age of my character to be a little bit older to hopefully gather in a larger audience (which happened with Miss Match), then consider your work and consider listening.

What about your own opinion?

Above all else, don't be too modest about your writing ("my writing sucks") hoping people will butter you back up and don't be too obnoxious about your writing ("I talked to a Civil war expert and he said that my book was like reading his own diary") hoping an editor will be smart enough to sign you.

Be confident but don't be overbearing. If you know you are doing what God wants you to do, then do it with confidence. But just like everyone in the world won't like your particular chocolate chip cookie recipe, everyone in the world probably won't like your book. The sad part about using that analogy is that you can't commiserate by eating your novel like you could with the cookies. :)

Maybe someone will offer advice that will totally be the missing piece you were looking for. Maybe they won't. But don't toss your work in the trash and be willing to give up at the first red ink mark you see on the face of your manuscript.

Stick with it! It might be painful, sore and wounding now, but seeing your name on the cover of a book someday is so completely worth it!

So, fess up - what are some of the opinions you've gotten on your work in progress? Did you listen to them?