I wrote a twitter joke about needing people to read my book so they could tell me if it’s good or not. I mean…I was kind of joking. You know the type of thing where you throw it out there and sort of mean it but ha ha, yeah, I’m joking.

Mostly.

I’ve got a book called THE MISFIT SOLDIER coming out on 2/22, and for whatever reason, it doesn’t have any advanced reviews from trade reviewers or even genre reviewers. This is unusual, but somewhat understandable given the pandemic, Christmas, and just the world in general right now. Or so many reassuring voices on my team are telling me. Secretly? I think they’re lying to me.

Because I can’t help wonder. Maybe I don’t have reviews because reviewers read my book and didn’t like it, and decided that rather than trash it, they would do me the courtesy of simply not reviewing it. Because sure, there are reviewers out there that would review anyway, give it two stars and be done. But some reviewers probably like me–after all, I’m a pretty stand-up guy and generally nice to people in the SF community–so maybe they’re cutting me a break.

And sure, several very talented writers read early copies and told me it was great. And sure, in general, they, by virtue of being, you know, professional fucking writers, know better than most what’s good and what’s not. But they all kind of know me, and we’re trained as writers not to really trash other people’s books. So if they didn’t like it, they wouldn’t tell me. This one I know is true, because when I don’t like a book, I don’t tell anyone.

For integrity purposes, I feel that I need to be clear that if I say publicly that I do like a book, then I a. read it and b. liked it. I don’t blurb books I haven’t read and I don’t blurb books that I don’t like. Period. But maybe other people do?

And of course there’s my agent and my editor, both of whom are near the top of their fields, and who are literally paid to be judges of what’s good and what’s not. My editor, specifically, accepted the book, which, in the business of writing, is a legal term that includes sending me a big check (I got half of my advance for the book on signing, half on acceptance of the book.) So, having read it, he literally put money behind it being good. But…who knows? Maybe he was just sick of it and ready to cut his losses.

In my mind, It’s Schrodinger’s Book at this point. It’s either good or it’s bad, and we can’t know which.

And that’s ridiculous. I’m a good writer. I know that, most days. Am I the best writer in the genre? Absolutely not. Not even close. But I’m not the worst, either. Enough people have read my books and there are enough reviews by people who know things where we can be pretty well assured that I have at least some talent.

But those were my previous books, not this one.

And of course I should be able to judge on my own. I can (and do) read any SF book and give you a cogent opinion on whether it’s good or not, both from a story and a writing craft perspective, and I can give you very specific thoughts on why I think what I think. I do it all the time.

So why do I have no perspective on my own writing? Yeah, I don’t know either. I do know that I’m not alone in this. It’s a very common refrain among authors.

I’ll believe this book is good when…yeah, there’s no answer to that. Some number of fan reviews? Nah. Because early fan reviews tend to be good, because the people who really like my books are the most likely to be the first to read the next one. They’re the people most likely to like my work. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I figure by this point, some of you are wondering how serious I am. And I admit, I’m probably exaggerating a little bit for effect. But not much. And here’s the thing: Most of the writers I know feel the same way. We don’t talk about it a lot, because ‘I’m not sure this is any good’ isn’t exactly great marketing. There’s this pressure (even if it’s self-imposed) to put yourself out there in a positive way so that maybe, just maybe, something will stick and people will want to read your book. I’d suggest that with most writers–with me, certainly–the feeling is stronger at sometimes than others. It’s never completely gone, but sometimes I just don’t think about it.

The time when you’re most likely to think about it? When you have a new book coming out.

So why am I writing this? I’m writing it for other authors, to let you know that it’s not weird. You’re not broken. I’m especially writing to debut authors, because that’s when it’s the strongest. You don’t even have the benefit of previous books to fall back on. When my first novel came out, I couldn’t write anything for two months ahead of time and a while after. I was too keyed up, too nervous.

Unfortunately, the feeling doesn’t go away. At least it hasn’t for me yet, hasn’t for a lot of people I know. Fortunately, it’s not as debilitating. THE MISFIT SOLDIER comes out in like 40 days and I wrote 2000 words yesterday. I’ll write 2000 more today. The feeling is absolutely still there, but I’ve learned to deal with it. There’s another book to write, and it hinges not at all on how this one does.

This post is also for those who haven’t found their spot in the publishing world yet. For those writers who are putting in the words, improving their craft, wondering if they’re ever going to be good enough to hit that moving target we call publishing. Because the doubt hits them too, right?

Here’s a story from before I was published that I may have told before, maybe not. When I was querying agents with PLANETSIDE, I started in November of 2015. I had about 30-35 agents that were, on the surface, a fit for it. It was a bit of a niche book, on the military side of SF, and it just didn’t fit a ton of agents. Half-way through January, I had racked up a bunch of rejections and exactly one partial request, but it was from a really good agent in the SF field. But I hadn’t heard back from her since the request.

And I was ready to quit.

I emailed my friend and then mentor Dan Koboldt, and told him as much. I told him I was beginning to think this wasn’t the book and that maybe I’d write something else, but I wasn’t sure. After all, I’d thought that this book was good, and it just wasn’t happening (looking back on it now, seeing how short this timeline is, it feels ridiculous to even say this stuff. But it’s all true.) Dan, as he usually does, talked me off a ledge, told me it was a good book, and to give it more time. Wise advice. I didn’t listen to him. Because of course he’d say that. But all these agents were indicating that it was not.

And then I got a rejection. That one partial request? Done. But it was the best rejection I ever got, even though it was just one line. It said ‘I’m going to pass because the tropes feel a bit too familiar, but you’re a good writer.’ And I believed her. And that’s the thing…I don’t think I ever know what’s going to do it, but that did it.

To finish the story, a couple weeks later my now agent, Lisa Rodgers, re-opened for queries and I sent mine in on the first day. Maybe ten days later I got a partial request, along with requests from a couple other agents, and by the end of February I had offers.

And that’s the thing. The book didn’t change. The only thing that changed was how I felt about it, and that had nothing to do with the future success of the book. Me deciding that ‘hey, these agents like it, it much be good’ didn’t all of a sudden manifest some sort of karmic good will. And then we repeated the whole mental process all over again when I went on submission and started racking up editor rejections.

So I guess that’s my point. Your book is what it is, and at different points in the process, you’re going to feel different ways about it. I don’t think this is a particularly revolutionary thought. Go to twitter and you’ll see a dozen writers a day talk about being in the phase where they think everything they’ve got is garbage, or the phase where they’re in love with it again. It’s normal. And it’s okay to have those feelings. What I’m feeling about this book right now? It’s fine. It’s either good or it’s not, and what I think about it, now that it is committed to paper, doesn’t change that at all.

The key is not letting it overwhelm you.

So I’m going back to work. I’m going to write my next book, and some of it will be good and some won’t, because it’s a draft and that’s what happens with drafts. And someday soon–probably in the next few weeks–something’s going to happen to tell me what I think about the book I wrote last year.

Addendum:

About four minutes after I went live with this post (no exaggeration. Four minutes) Lightspeed Magazine published the first review of THE MISFIT SOLDIER. The review is…quite good.

And just like that, I’ve changed how I feel about this book.

Tags: imposter syndrome, Writing