On Sharing My Novel
A few months ago I shared my novel The Immortal Remains with a friend. The novel was in the midst of being serialized and was pretty much in final form, after starting it about 11 years ago.
She was at first reluctant to read it, since she'd read an earlier work of mine and didn't enjoy it. I convinced her to give it a try, saying (truthfully) I wasn't going to be upset if she didn't like it. I've reached the point in my writing where I'm the person I need to please, not random other readers, though other readers claim to have enjoyed the novel.
When she was done, she expressed that she was positively impressed, but didn't like the ending. As I am preparing the manuscript for self-publication, I asked her specifically what she disliked about the ending.
She replied with a lengthy message that she said was the distillation of several draft responses she'd started over the last few months. It turns out she dislikes the story as a whole. She expected a "hero saves the world" story, but I delivered a story where the protagonist can't save the world, so she saves herself and the people closest to her. My friend considers this a waste of potential.
I'm not upset that she doesn't like the story. I don't expect everyone to like my story. But the more I think about her reaction, the more I feel that her initial reaction to it was a lie, and she was (perhaps) trying to spare my feelings, though I made it clear that I didn't want or need feeling-sparing feedback.
But what really bothers me is that her message was full of complaints about the book that are completely the opposite of what was written in the story. It's like she was so invested in the way she thought the story should be that she was blind to everything that was important to the story I told.
Honestly, I've never seen this kind of reaction before, neither to a story I've written, to a story I've read, nor a story I've seen another reader's reaction to. It makes me question not only my own writing ability, but every person who's worked with me on earlier drafts, including fellow writers (published and unpublished) who helped me through earlier drafts and devoted a good deal of their time to it. Did they all lie to me? I don't know, but I'm afraid they did.
A large part of me (the larger part, at the moment) is happy to just ignore this as an aberration, to proceed with my self-publication goals. I don't expect much in the way of sales; it's something I need to do for myself, and if other people like it, that makes me happy. But part of me is scared that my friend is completely right, that the evidence of my own eyes as well as everyone else who's read the story (whether they liked it or not) is wrong, and I'm a terrible writer.