Not everyone gets you right away. It's your job to help them get it.

Here's how to get it on the page so everyone gets it. Decision #12 from Sixteen Superpowers Memoir Writers Need to Have.

Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash

12. Not everyone gets it right away.

YOUR MANTRA: It’s neither good nor bad—it’s just feedback.

Accept that your First Reader may not get it right away, and that is information, too. You may sign on with a writing teacher, book coach or developmental editor, then feel baffled that this First Reader person, who is so skilled, is not quite getting it. 

This is actually the best (well, second best…) outcome you can have. My First Reader, a writing teacher and developmental editor I had through The Lighthouse Book Project, mapped out about six possible visions and narrative structures for what I submitted to her. 

While that sounds frustrating—why didn’t she get it?—she was magnificent, and I highly recommend her (Erika Krouse, author of Tell Me Everything and other books). 

She didn’t get it because I didn’t have it on the page yet. Or I had some of it on the page, but the true through-line was diluted by all the other things that were on the page.

Some of th…