The reader is the gatekeeper—and other motivational thoughts.

1. Margaret Atwood once said, “It’s up to the reader to decide if you’re any good.” Let me ask you this:

• Are you frustrated because agents won’t respond to your query letters?
• Are you irritated because your spouse, after reading your first chapter, said, “I guess I don’t get it”?
• Are you annoyed because the only feedback your critique group gives you is “It’s good! I like it”?

Here’s the deal, friendos: At the end of the day, it is the reader — the person you wrote the book for, the reason you write — who determines if you’re a good writer.

How cool is that? Really think about that. It doesn’t matter if an agent — or a few dozen — rejected you. It doesn’t matter if your spouse didn’t like the story. It doesn’t matter if your critique group sucks at giving feedback.

What does the reader think? It’s kind of freeing to hear that, isn’t it?

In a way, the reader is the true gatekeeper. Not some stranger in New York who skimmed your query. Not your spouse who has never been much of a reader anyway. Not your critique group that hasn’t offered anything constructive. In the end, it is the reader—the person who bought your book and read it—who acts as the gatekeeper.

2. Did you know it took New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Kostova ten years to write The Historian? That’s 3,652.43 days, roughly. Think about that.

Are you beating yourself up because you’ve been working on your book for a year? Two years? Five? So what?

Why does that matter? Why is it bad to spend a “long time” writing your book? Because there are authors out there spitting ’em out like a rapper? Again, who cares?

You work on your book until it is at the level of quality you know it deserves. Yes, I understand that you can edit and rewrite forever, but I’m talking about getting your book where it needs to be before you move to the next stage (hiring an editor, for example).

One of my BFFs, Gary Medina, has been working on his novel for four years. I finally got to read the first three chapters this week, and I was floored. It’s sci-fi, but oh honey, it has this beautiful literary fiction element to it that makes it immersive. He needed that time to strengthen his skills as a writer. And that’s okay.

You know what, while we’re here:

Gillian Flynn: 3 years to write Gone Girl

William Golding: 5 years to write Lord of the Flies

J. K. Rowling: 6 years to write Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

J. R. R. Tolkien: 16 years to write The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Just keep writing and stop looking at the calendar.

3. Did you get your first negative review? As I’ve said before, celebrate it! I know, I know. That’s not conventional advice, but no one has ever accused me of being conventional.

Since we’ve enjoyed a lesson from Margaret Atwood, let’s grab another one:

[criticizing the lack of a futuristic language akin to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four or Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange] “The writing of The Handmaid’s Tale is undistinguished… This is a serious defect, unpardonable maybe for the genre: a future that has no language invented for it lacks a personality. That must be why, collectively, it is powerless to scare.” — Mary McCarthy, writing in The New York Times, 1986.

Ahem. So who’s excited for season 4 of The Handmaid’s Tale?

Okay, for real, though: You celebrate good reviews, yes? Then celebrate the bad ones. I like to share negative reviews of my books with my email newsletter readers and on social media. Here’s my favorite one so far for The 10 Commandments of Author Branding:

Yeah…I probably need to stop expecting a marketing book to help me figure out how to promote my books without being on social media. That would be my own fault for unrealistic hopes going in. ;)

[She goes on to explain what she liked and what she didn’t, but this is my favorite part . . .]

Content — a few uses of “sucks”; one use of God’s name as an exclamation

4. Have you gone through the pandemic without writing? So have many other writers. If you’ve been too distraught to write, then pick a weekend or a day where you can take on a challenge.

I once did the 2-Day Writing Marathon (with schedule template), and it was awesome. I felt so accomplished. I wrote 10,000 words in one day. Like, what? At that time, in mid-2017, I wasn’t making a lot of progress with The Suicide Tree, and it bummed me out. So I challenged myself to write 10,000 words in one day. When I accomplished that, I felt like Wonder Woman.

Is there a challenge you can take on to help you write some words this month?

There’s got to be something you can do to get ya in the writing mood.

5. Does your marketing strategy need help? You’re not alone. Most authors have no idea what to do to brand themselves and market their books. Instead of complaining about it, fix it. If you have no website, then get one. If you have no reviews, then get some. If you have no sales, then get some.

“Oh, wow, genius advice,” you say with an eyeroll.

What I’m saying is it’s frustrating if you just want to have a pity party about your lack of marketing but never do anything to solve the problem.

There are books and resources and courses and videos and workshops and more that can teach you how to market your book. So why are you still fretting?

Probably because you don’t know where to start.

So then take baby steps. Hire something out. Ask for help. Pick just one thing that’s been looming over your head that you know needs to be done—like a website—and come up with a plan on how you’re going to eat that frog!

What sucks—oops, sorry, I mean—stinks is when you complain about something without ever doing anything to fix the problem.

Need ideas? Go to my blog.

An expert editor, best-selling author, and book marketer, Shayla Raquel works one-on-one with authors and business owners every day. A lifelong lover of books, she has edited over 400 books and has launched several Amazon best sellers for her clients.

Her award-winning blog teaches new and established authors how to write, publish, and market their books.

She is the author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist, The Rotting (in Shivers in the Night), The Suicide Tree, and The 10 Commandments of Author Branding. In her not-so-free time, she acts as organizer for the Yukon Writers’ Society, volunteers at the Oklahoma County Jail, and obsesses over squirrels. She lives in Oklahoma with her dogs, Chanel, Wednesday, and Baker.