Finally, I’m being honest about my novel!

This is a post I’ve wanted to write for a long time. It’s only because of Michelle Davidson Argyle’s courageous post that I’ve written it now. I have a pride problem. It’s not that I don’t have pride in my work because “secretly” I do. The problem is in expressing it.

I believe my problem stems from two issues. One is that “Pride goeth before destruction …” is a warning ingrained in my psyche. Another is that my perfectionism always cancels out my pride. I constantly catalog the faults in everything I do or say.

Before I published Brevity, I said I wouldn’t read any reviews it received. My reasoning was that I wouldn’t believe the good ones, but I would take to heart the bad ones. I said those words knowing that not only is that counter-productive—it’s sick!

It’s also dishonest. The truth is—I love Brevity!

But I don’t often admit that, out of self-protection. I fear that someone will read my book because I said it’s good and they’ll hate it. They’ll resent me for wasting their time. As Michelle said, “So I pretend that I don’t have pride in my work so that if they read my stuff and hate it they’ll understand that I didn’t think it was that great either.”

Deep down, I believe the good things people are saying about it. So far, my lowest rating is 4 stars! Yes, of course, I expect to get lower ratings eventually. But you know what? I believe that when I get a 1-star rating, it will be from someone who should never have read my book in the first place because it’s not the kind of story they’d like, no matter how well written it was.

I’ll never write a perfect book. Then again, I’m not sure many other authors have or will. But I have and can write darned good ones. And because I’m owning up to that, in my next post, I’m going to share a couple of my favorite excerpts from Brevity.

If you don’t like them … well … so what?

[tweetmeme source=”cassidylewis” only_single=false]