By A.C. Williams by @acw_author

Are you a gifted writer? Has someone in your life told you that you were born to be a storyteller? Do you always rank high in writing contests or in writing projects?

Awesome. Lean into that. Embrace that. Words don’t come easily to everyone who makes a living as a novelist. If you are a communicator who can touch minds and hearts with your words, don’t take that for granted.

But do you want to know a secret about being a gifted writer?

You still can’t do it by yourself.

Sorry to burst your bubble, my dear independent introverts. As much as you try to rely on your own capabilities and capacity, you will eventually run out of yourself. You’ll run head-first into a wall of obstacles you can’t navigate. Or you’ll get so buried under all the everyday tasks and responsibilities of life that you can’t keep anything straight.

You need help. And you know what? That’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay. It’s wonderful!

I used to think I had to do everything on my own. If I asked for help, it was just a means to allow other people to control me. If I showed any sort of weakness, it would reflect badly on me as a professional.

I learned my first lesson on this when I invested in my first professional novel edit. For any of you who’ve had a developmental edit done on your manuscript and seen the results hemorrhaging red ink on every single page, you are not alone in your trauma.

That first edit tore me up inside. My editor ran out of ink in four pens. Granted, it was a large book, but it needed a lot of work.

To be very honest, my first response was indignance. I saw the red ink and all the in-margin comments and got irritated. Why? I’m a good writer. No, I’m a great writer. How can anyone read anything I’ve written and have this many corrections? My story should be perfectly fine exactly the way I’ve written it!

Well, then I started reading the comments. Know what I discovered? My editor was right.

My manuscript had holes in it. It had inconsistent characters. It dragged in certain places and fell flat in others.

But when you’re so close to a story—when you’ve invested hundreds of hours of emotional effort and mental energy into it—you can’t see its true flaws. That’s why you need someone else to read it, so they can see what you can’t.

But here’s the trouble with asking someone else to read your manuscript: Is that person qualified to give you usefulfeedback on it?

Does the person you’ve asked for feedback know the genre you write? Do they read other successful books in that genre? Do they know how to identify what elements work in a story and which ones don’t? And, most importantly, are they willing to give you constructive criticism if they find something in your story that needs work?

If you only ever give your manuscript to people who love it and gush about it, how will you ever improve it? Because, believe me, no first draft is perfect as it is. Honestly, no second draft is perfect either.

Once you’ve found an editor or a critique partner or a beta group that gets your genre and knows the art of storytelling, work with them. Listen to them. Don’t argue with them. Don’t push back when they give you suggestions or recommendations to use in your story.

That doesn’t mean you have to do everything they suggest. It’s still your story. But remember that you may not be able to see everything in your manuscript. After you’ve worked on it for so long, you become blind to it.

If you have a gift for storytelling, use it. And, what’s more, be thankful for it. Share it with people. Acknowledge that it is a gift and give credit to God for creating you that way. But just because you have a gift for storytelling doesn’t mean your first draft will be a marketable manuscript.

Believing in your work doesn’t mean ignoring advice from an industry expert who wants to see you succeed. Protecting your author voice doesn’t mean refusing to correct real problems in the structure of your story.

Don’t sell yourself short, but also don’t think higher of your skill set than you should. Arrogance doesn’t look good on anyone. Humility and teachability will take you so much farther than giftedness ever will.

Award-winning author A.C. Williams is a coffee-drinking, sushi-eating, story-telling nerd who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. She’d rather be barefoot, and if she isn’t, her socks won’t match. She has authored eight novels, three novellas, three devotional books, and more flash fiction than you can shake a stick at. A senior partner at Uncommon Universes Press, she is passionate about stories and the authors who write them. Learn more about her book coaching and follow her adventures online at www.amycwilliams.com.