S.A. Bodeen is the Minnesota Author in the Spotlight here on BookSnob for the coldest January in history (that I can remember). Good grief we have had school canceled 4 days this month due to frigid temps. Needless to say, I am getting a lot of reading and writing in this month. S. A. Bodeen recently moved to the area and has written a guest post about why writers need to hear the word no.
S. A. Bodeen's Guest Post
Writers Need to Hear NO
If I had to come up with the question I am most asked, it would have to be “What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a writer?” I think we’ve all heard about every answer possible to this one: “Write a lot. Find someone to look at your work that you trust. Read a lot.” But I’m about to offer a new piece of advice, one that actually came to mind while watching American Idol the other night. (Yes, after NOT watching last year, I’m giving it another try this year. Don’t judge.)
At the end of the audition show, after a few people—singers convinced they were chocked with talent—showed us that they were not as gifted as they thought, Keith Urban did a brief confessional. He said that, too often, aspiring singers surrounded themselves by people who told them YES ,which did nothing to help them grow. In effect, he said that aspiring singers needed to find themselves someone who would tell them NO.
And I agree, because it totally applies to writing. When did I start working harder on my novel writing? When my agent sent me a box of four novels I had sent him, along with a letter saying, in effect, NO. Sure, I then quit for half a year, because being told NO is hard to hear. But that word also got me to think about why my writing wasn’t working. So when I started writing again, I knew I needed to work harder on getting better. If my agent had said YES to those novels—which, BTW, sucked BIG TIME, and will never be published—I would not be a published novelist today. His negative responses to my work, along with all those rejection letters I got over the years, are the reasons there are novels out there with my name on them. I think writers must hear NO before they can truly believe when someone tells them YES.
S. A. Bodeen's latest novel is The Fallout. The Fallout is the riveting sequel to The Compound. If you would like to win a copy of The Fallout please enter here: The Fallout Giveaway
