Self-confidence

I NEED to get better about posting more often. Maybe I'll get this someday.

But for a topic for today. This time, I actually have a somewhat good one. I've been working on my Y/A Christian fantasy novel, and a few critique partners had suggested I change a certain event. I took their advice and edited a major event out of the first few chapters. It took away some major character development, too.

Then I sat back and looked at the chopped version. And I discovered something.

I hated it. I had just neutered my story. I took someone else's advice for it, and it was no longer mine. Something was gone out of it. Some of its heart. The spirit of the thing.  So I restored it to its original condition and breathed a sigh of relief.

Now, this doesn't mean that taking all advice is bad. It's a good thing. You need outside opinion. Dragon's Whisper would be a hunk of junk without all the beta readers and critique partners.
But taking a bit of advice and using it for your purposes is different than taloring your story to fit everyone's opinion.

Not only will you kill yourself trying to please everyone (It's impossible!), you will no longer have YOUR story. It'll be everyone else's story. It won't be yours.

Your should be writing for YOU. Not for the market, or to make everyone else happy. It's great if that happens, and if you enjoy yourself and write a great book, it usually does. But it shouldn't be your goal.

So, this blog post was slightly longer! (And I'll hopefully get better at posting regularly.)