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It’s good enough, it’s smart enough…

And doggone it, people like it!

We all know the words of Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live.  But sometimes it’s hard to believe them, no matter how often we tell them to ourselves, especially when it comes to our writing.

Take the month of August, for example.  I sent out 11 submissions.  I had 8 rejections and 1 acceptance for the month.  That’s about 11%. Ouch. But if I think of it on the positive side, I sent stories off to some publications with a 5% acceptance rate.  I figured I probably wouldn’t get in, but it didn’t hurt to try, right?  And beta readers like my stuff (or so they say).  So that means it’s just a matter of finding the right market, right?

And now I’m having those same doubts about my novel.  A beta reader this week hated the chapter she read so much, she actually started cursing in her review.  But then someone else read that same chapter and said I did a great job with it.  Myself, I’m not sure what to think about it.  I like it but I think it needs revising.  Maybe.

Since this is a long weekend for us Americans, I printed out my revised novel (17 chapters=221 pages in double-spaced 11pt Times New Roman) and have been reading through it, looking for inconsistencies I might miss if I revise a chapter at a time.  Half the time, I think what I’ve written is crap.  With the rest, I’m impressed by how not bad it is.  But mostly, I have no idea.  I want to think it’s of publishable quality, but I’m too close to judge objectively.

What’s your overall view of your writing?  What do you do when waffling between good and not-so-good?  Which side wins?

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