Hi.

So I've been reading your post and the comments below and thinking about them quite a bit for the past couple of ours. Maybe that's weird. I don't know.

Anyway, I know you liked the encouragement more than the suggestions (though you'd prefer neither), and unfortunately what I'm going to post will be more of the latter (but I'll promise to try to be encouraging too).

Now please don't get offended. I don't mean to be mean when I say this: You sound pretentious. It's your first book, get over yourself.

I'm sorry. But I honestly think it's part of the problem. You think that you've created beautiful art, and that people don't like it because they can't appreciate beauty, they don't know how to "contemplate the dawn", and that your work is just too far above them for them to understand its genius. To understand your genius (because you read Shakespeare instead of Tolkien).

I think you're too proud to accept the fact that maybe your writing isn't good. You tell yourself that people don't appreciate good writing. But here's the thing, just because you like your writing doesn't mean it's good.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that your writing is awful, just that it might not be the greatness you expect it to be. I've read a bit of the sample of your book, and the main issue is the plot. Chapter 0 is just a bunch of elaborately descriptive fight scenes between nameless characters I don't care about. Chapter 1 starts with a fight between two nameless characters I don't care about. Oh, she can use fire.

I stopped there.

Here's what I've learned from my creative writing classes and listening to authors: Your first book will suck. Well, it probably will suck. In the same way I'm sure Michelangelo and Monet made a tons of shitty art before becoming the great artists that we know today.

You've only written one book. I know that's a huge milestone, but it's still just one book, and already you're expecting it to be literature. Your writing will probably develop. Your style will change, and you'll probably look back years from now and hate the way you wrote today.

What I want to tell you is that you need to keep writing. Don't spend 7 years on them, just start churning out books. They won't be great. And you shouldn't expect them to be. In time, they'll approve.

Have people read your books. Maybe not your friends, because they'll be afraid to tear it to shreds. Find people who will hate your book, who will tell you everything that's wrong with it, so that you can make it better. Take their criticisms and learn from them.

I think a lot of issues with new writers nowadays is that they want their work to be wholly their own. But you have to be open to collaboration. You have to be willing to let go of some things that just don't work, despite how much you might want them to.

I guess my main point is that you need to stop believing your work is great because then you won't try to improve. It takes so much more to write than just simply bleeding.