Creative Control

Recently, I’ve been submitting a lot of my work for potential publication. I expect some of it to get rejected. Perhaps sometimes no reason for the rejection will be provided - perhaps sometimes they’ll tell me it wasn’t a good fit for their aesthetic or style or genre. Occasionally a literary magazine or a journal will give more detailed feedback on your piece.

I also understand that before things are published, they need to be edited. I have heard some people say that in the editing process (for all different kinds of writing) your work transforms and becomes no longer your own. Thus far I’ve experienced far less substantive edits, although I have on occasion expected more notes than I’ve gotten. I’ve never really felt like my work didn’t belong to me anymore (but sometimes it did take me a few days to come to terms with the fact that my editors or beta readers made good points that I should listen to, instead of being stubborn about the quality of an early draft).

Taking criticism takes time and practice, and I know a lot of writers struggle with this in the early days, or even throughout their careers. It can be difficult when someone tells you that your work is flawed. That it isn’t good enough- because no matter how you couch it, if you’re trying to make it the best it can be, that means it isn’t there yet. I’ve had a lot of experience receiving varying levels of feedback. By this point I’m pretty good at assessing which kinds of comments and suggestions are useful to me, and which are from people who don’t really understand the point of the story. Or sometimes the comments are just not applicable to the stage your writing is at in the moment. Occasionally I’m surprised to find hurt feeling flare up over minor feedback, but for the most part I have accepted that there are things I am not good at (and while I know what many of them are, I keep repeating those mistakes anyway, especially in early drafts). There are times when I desperately want a harsh edit, because I can recognize a piece is flawed but cannot see myself how to fix it- I am too close to the work. I don’t believe that everyone is their own harshest critic, but I don’t believe that deceiving yourself as to the quality of your writing will help you get anywhere.

So, recently I’ve been submitting some of my work for potential publication. I have gone through several rounds of edits with each piece, though if I step away a while and look back I can always find more things that could be better. I am not by any means suggesting that my work is flawless or above improvement. I think everything I write could stand to be improved further - but, as I was told shortly before I handed in the final edits for my book, eventually you have to stop and let it go. I was expecting to receive negative responses, or perhaps a kind refusal with reasons why it wasn’t ready, or wasn’t right for that particular publication.

I was not expecting to receive one of my pieces back with an acceptance and a red line through almost every sentence in the thing with suggestions for how to improve it.

This is not inherently a bad thing. I was open to the idea of taking suggestions. Even suggestions that I do not agree with necessarily can be compromised on as a stylistic choice to better fit the tone of the publication. However, as I read through the comments on my story, I found that the editors and I just weren’t seeing eye to eye about the meaning behind the piece. That, if I’d made their changes, it would’ve become unrecognizable to me, with the intent behind which I first wrote it. I had a decision to make. Should I take the publication credit, the nominal payment offered, and release a version of my story which didn’t say what I wanted it to say?

I struggled with this decision. I feel like I am still a new writer, and any chance at publication is one I should jump on. I did not want to feel that way. I did not want to compromise the integrity of the story I was trying to tell, for that reason.

In the end, I decided to turn down the offer. It was oddly empowering, this decision to maintain creative control over the thing I had written. There have been so many moments in my writing life already where I have wished that “a professional” would take over and clean up all of my mistakes. That someone who knew better would fix everything wrong in a piece I had written. It was nice to know that I had enough pride in one of my own pieces that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice it.

Creative control is one of the main reasons that people cite for self-publication vs. traditional. In a traditional publishing contract, so I am told, the author has little say - or has to fight tooth and nail - to keep some of the original work intact after fierce edits. This is not why I chose to become an independently published author. But now that I’ve made the choice once, I can see how authors with more confidence might feel about the matter. I suppose the question then becomes whether their confidence is warranted. I’ve heard a lot lately the advice to never think that you know anything. Stay humble, in other words- acknowledge that there is much you do not understand. I think it is good advice, for any number of reasons.

I do not think that the piece I originally wrote is beyond fixing. Clearly, if the editor who read it did not understand my intention, then I have some revisions to make. Rereading their comments, there are some suggestions I will take. Some overall advice I will listen to. While rereading, I also spotted other flaws that I’d like to rectify in the next draft. Above all, I greatly appreciate the time and effort that the editor spent on reviewing the piece and making suggestions about what could be improved. It was very difficult to tell them that we did not see eye to eye on the direction of the story. They read it, and provided their thoughts, and their suggestions. As someone who regularly provides this kind of feedback to my peers, I understand how much work it takes to give thoughtful advice. I did not want to downplay the work they’d put into it in any way.

But in the end, it's my story. And while it has room for improvement, I need to tell this one my own way.