To thine own self, get some perspective.

I think the most difficult thing about being a writer, or any other type of creative person, is the work itself.  Everything else pales in comparison.  The second most difficult is knowing if what you are creating is any good.  This is an affliction that has ruined more creative careers than any other.  It is the plague felt most broadly by the young, or the novice at any age, though it can cripple the experienced, accomplished artist as well. 

I’m not exactly addressing self-confidence, though there’s an element of that.  It’s more a problem of perspective.  It’s impossible to know yourself the way others see you.  Remember the shock of hearing your recorded voice for the first time?  Seeing yourself in a video?  These experiences for most are appalling, not only if you see or hear something much less appealing than you imagined, it’s just the utterly other-worldly sensation of observing yourself.

I imagine film actors get over this, though more than one has reported never watching their own movies and TV shows.  They all probably have different reasons, though to me it boils down to the jarring cognitive dissonance of witnessing a self presented to the world that you don’t exactly recognize. 

This is a big reason we have editors.  Nobody needs a lousy one, yet a good one is priceless.  Unfortunately, the spread between a good editor and a crummy editor is very wide.  And they can make or break your life’s work, not to instill any more dread than you already feel trying to be successful at the trade. 

Even good editors can be wrong, and poor editors can have good ideas.  So you have to learn how to be a capable arbiter of your own work.  There’s no getting around that.  In the creative world, you often hear the words, “It’s all subjective.”  Well, that’s true, sort of.  But we have recorded evidence of Laurence Olivier playing Hamlet and Bo Derek as Tarzan’s girlfriend, Jane Porter, and no one would dispute which performance was the better effort.  All of us are muddling around in between these extremes, and hoping to settle toward the Olivier end of the spectrum.  You can maybe do that all on your own, but usually it takes a little help.

I learned one important lesson from my years in advertising, much of which was consumed by qualitative market research.  This is the branch of study where you go deep into questioning a small sample of respondents.  Exemplars include focus groups and one-on-one interviews.  An important factor was whether the respondents were aided or unaided.  Unaided means they were told nothing about the product or service except the most essential.  Say you were hired by Subaru to learn more about their Outback model.  It would start like this:  “Do you drive a car?”  “Yes, I do.”  “So, let me ask you a few questions about cars.”

If you have a manuscript you want to learn more about, I think it’s best to find someone who doesn’t know you, and make it a completely blind study.  Meaning, they don’t know whether you’re a man, woman or giraffe.  They don’t know your publishing history, or anything else.  Nothing, nada, zip.  The only thing they have to consider is the work on the page.  These people aren’t that easy to find, but usually writers know other writers or literary types who would know someone whose opinion they would trust.  It’s not perfect, but I think the best approach.

You’ll hear these helpful people called beta readers.  My beta readers, with any luck, are residents of far planets. 

I’ve learned there’s no one worse for this task than friends or family.  They’ll either be too gentle or too harsh.  Because they know you, they will screen everything they read through that familiarity.  Doesn’t work.  I do have a very small number of people who read and offer ideas about my stuff who know me well.  But I trust them to be honest, and I like their advice.  But this is only after many years of give and take.

I’m not entirely sure that professional editors are all that good at being beta readers.  They come with a lot of experience, which usually carries some accretion of bias and preference that can get in the way.  I’ve had some wonderful professional advice, though also some that could have been damaging had I not had the wherewithal to stand athwart those judgements and say, nah. 

Even as it’s impossible to truly know thyself, it’s not that much easier to judge the quality of the advice you’re getting, but that’s the deal.  It will always be your ship to captain, and you alone will determine whether or not you make it to port.