Silence the voices.
They come at all times in all varieties. A reader’s voice telling you how dull your story is. A critic’s voice issuing a declaration that the material is drivel. A friend’s voice echoing an air of indifference. A fan you’re letting down. An editor sharpening another pencil. A publisher disappointed in the numbers. A marketer confused at what box to put you in. A fellow writer laughing. A stranger utterly unimpressed.
The voices come when you’re writing. They follow you down the corridors of your life. They go to bed with you and they’re still there when the morning comes.
To try and make it as a writer, you need to tame the voices. They’ll never fully go away. They’ll never be silenced. But you need to hold them at bay as much as possible. Write through them. Take the positive voices and input and remember them. Remember why you love to write, why you need to write. Ignore the dissenters. Drown them out. Pray about them. And do all this as you’re continuing to write. Show the voices that no matter what they say, nothing is going to make you stop.
I had an agent tell me that the only thing worth writing was “vampire chick lit” because it was marketable. He proceeded to describe his newest client’s work — a novel about a woman werewolf who was a late night talk radio host. I replied that I didn’t write because I wanted to be the next Stephanie Meyer; I wrote because I had a story to tell.
The irony is that another agent might tell you the exact opposite–that vampire chick lit is being overdone. Whenever a wave hits that means it’s usually too late to ride it. Stephanie Meyer had a story to tell and it became a huge hit. You have the right approach. Doesn’t mean your book (or my book or anybody’s book) will take fire like Meyer’s series–but nobody can predict things like that!