In writing a book, there comes a time when someone will not like what you’ve done. They will disagree with the message or story. And that’s fine. That means you were clearly communicating.
But what if someone says to you the following: “Hmmmm…I have no idea what you are saying, but…?”
Even that isn’t bad if you are entertaining while doing it. But one cannot get by with only entertaining. At some point too much guessing tires reader’s soul and mind, and connections are lost.
If someone says the storyline is missing huge chunks, is convoluted to the point of making the reader guess your intent, makes the reader work too hard so that it is no longer entertaining but work, or is full of typos, dropped words, or sound-alike words with different meanings, now you’ve got a big problem.
What do you do when that happens? Many take offense at the bearer of bad news, unfriending them on FB, giving them the cold shoulder in real life, and in general doing everything in their power to avoid the hard fact: Their writing sucks.
Any creative that attempts to sell their output to another has a big ego. Having a big ego is not the problem. Slavish attention to ego-propping at the expense of high-quality output only works if writing is a hobby, now that’s a problem. And if one is in hobby, then one is not in the business of writing.
