Erin Lodes

I am pretty on the fence about whether or not it is good practice to send unpublished books to friends and family. The reasons for and against both make sense to me.

It’s natural to want to share this thing you’ve been working on for however long. For me, it’s been like seven years finishing this first book. I worked hard on it. I’m fucking proud of it. I’ve spoken with both friends and family about it, and of course they’re always asking me when it will be finished. Often, they’ve asked to read it.

Still, when I finished IN MY SKIN and started to query it, I hesitated to send it to the people in my life. Because when you send it, you can’t help but wait for feedback. And people are busy. And it’s annoying to read a book-length pdf on your computer. And maybe my book isn’t the type of book they usually read, which means they probably won’t connect with it the way I’m hoping.

But in the end, I sent it out to some friends. Most of the people I sent it to haven’t said anything to me about it. Which is totally okay, due to all the reasons above. I never expect feedback from anyone unless I’m paying them for it.

But this week, someone did get back to me. A friend I love who is not the type of person to pull punches. He told me my book is the sadistic result of Gillian Flynn and John Green sharing a bottle of wine. He also said it made him cry in public. And that I portrayed certain, very-heavy things really well. And that he saw himself in one of the characters.

And I know all the things. Like, of course he said that, he loves me. He went into it with rose-colored glasses. Etc., etc., etc. But he’s the first person to read the thing other than me and my writing coach. And it just makes me so happy.

In the middle of querying, in the middle of rejection after rejection, it’s nice to get that feedback. It’s nice to know I affected someone. (It’s also really weird and a bit scary to think someone read all those things that used to just be in my head, but that will be another blog post.)

So this week, on my quest to get my novel published. I’m doing alright. I’m about 14 rejections deep. But I also made a friend cry. So I’m going to keep on swimming.

Anyway, that just happens to be how I feel about it. What do you think?

How I Published My Novel is going to be an ongoing blog series detailing how I get this freaking thing published. I know, I know, you could probably tell that from the title… I’ve gotten to this point (and am still getting help from) the amazing John Adamus, who is my writing coach.

If you haven’t already, check out Part One of How I Finished My Novel, and start from the beginning of this story.