Reader,

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of being on the annual Paths to Publishing panel, co-hosted by the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville and The Porch at Parnassus Books. (Yes, that's a lot of links, but they all deserve it.)

The event was fantastic. It's always fun to be with other people who passionately love reading and writing. Also, for those who don't know, the publishing community in Nashville is an incredibly welcoming space. The folks who move in this space genuinely want others—especially newcomers—to succeed. And not just succeed, but also love the process.

Moderator Mike Bzozowski (from HarperCollins) prepared some fantastic questions for us, including this doozy that he threw my way:

There are a lot of good and true answers to that question. Honestly, I would have loved to hear what my fellow panelists would say. But here's where I landed:

The single biggest mistake I see writers make when trying to get published is forgetting about their readers.

Writing starts as something we want to say. It's a burning desire to put words to something we've experienced—something that only we can share with the world. That's what every writer is trying to do, whether they're writing a nature poem, an investigative essay, or a sci-fi novel.

As you probably know, this isn't an easy pursuit. The right words might seem to evade us. That crucial connecting scene might feel frustratingly cloudy. The perfect closing might remain out of our reach. Through it all, we stick it out, trusting ourselves to know when we've taken the work as far as we can and can call it "done."

And yet, there comes a time where we have to extend that trust to others. When we can't, our work suffers.

An agent recently told me about an author she had to let go. It happened after he turned in a revised manuscript. Some of her feedback had been outright ignored. And we're not talking about minor typos: these were key story constructs that threatened the integrity of his novel. Other feedback had been addressed, but in a perplexingly convoluted way. Something that could have been fixed with a simple sentence was turned into an additional and wholly unnecessary story arc.

I'm not saying that every author needs to devoutly follow every suggestion their agent / editor / beta reader / mom gives them. Not hardly. (As my clients know, I usually LOVE it when they push back and argue with me about my suggestions. Usually.)

But I am saying this: you need to ask yourself, "Why do I want to disregard this feedback?"

In the face of daunting feedback, it's easy to stick to our guns and declare, "They just don't get it! Here I stand, I can do no other!" There are even moments when that response is the right one. However, those moments don't come around as often as we think they do.

It's why having trusted readers is vital to our work. We need people who can gently remind us that we're not just writing to be heard—we're writing to share, and we can't share what isn't clear to our readers.

Keep your stick on the ice.

Frank Ewert
Book Coach, Editor, Deliverer of Daunting Feedback
Author of Embrace Your Writer's Block and Blue Ice​