I did the thing most writers avoid: I hit “Publish Your Paperback Now” and immediately started sending the link to every phone number I had. (I did leave off an ex or two.)
I thought finishing what I started would be enough to make me feel confident. I assumed I would publish this pretty book, feel certain I’d said everything the best way I could, and watch the sales and five-star reviews find me.
Not quite.
Hitting that publish button showed me just how little control I actually had over what happened next. Suddenly, there were metrics. Sales ranks, follower counts, engagement, pages read, and, everyone’s favorite part: royalties. No one really prepares you for that in grad school.
And that’s where I think confidence in your craft has to come in. Not the kind of confidence that assumes everyone will love your work, understand every sentence, or leave a five-star review. The kind that allows you to stand behind what you’ve written even when someone doesn’t.
Because someone will always read it differently than you intended. Someone won’t get it. Someone will dislike a character you spent months developing or misunderstand a point you thought you made perfectly clear. You can revise until you can’t stand to look at the manuscript anymore, and there will still be someone who thinks you should have done it differently.
You have to make peace with that before you hit publish. Not because your work is above criticism, but because your confidence in your ability to write can’t depend on everyone else’s ability to appreciate it.
And besides, one book was never supposed to be the whole goal. At least, not for me. I want to write more books. I want to get better, experiment, take risks, and keep putting stories into the world. That means I can’t afford to let the reception of one book decide whether I have what it takes to write the next one.
Putting your work out there means making yourself available for criticism. That’s part of the deal. But remember this: they paid to have an opinion. Most people won’t even do that. Lol.
Seriously, though. Most people have opinions about writing, publishing, and what they would do if they were the ones putting a book out into the world. Actually doing it is a different story. You can take constructive criticism seriously without treating every negative opinion as a verdict on your talent.
You did the thing. You finished the book. You put it out there. Let that mean something.
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