Murder Your Darlings!

The Trials and Tribulations of Writing

About a month ago I completed the first draft of a novel which I wrote in under five weeks. It was a tough endeavor and a great exercise in self-discipline. The process consisted of exposing my very heart and soul as I tapped busily away at my keyboard for five to eight hours a day. 
Hemingway is supposed to have said that writing a novel is not hard, that all you have to do is sit down at a typewriter and cut open a vein. I did just that.

But I was mortified when informed by an expert that my protagonist was not someone readers could easily identify with. Granted he only read two chapters, but I guess that would be more than enough to turn people away. There are other books out there after all, ones with characters that grab the reader from the very beginning.
This was my first hard knock as a would-be author. It took tremendous effort to drag myself back up and get down to writing some more, tempting as it was to slit my throat and flood the keyboard in a sea of literary blood.
You have to write for others as well as for yourself, I have learned. That is if you ever want to get published and stay published. In hindsight it is obvious to me that I was writing more about myself rather than for myself, but the point struck home nevertheless. The salt poured liberally on the wound was the very fact that this protagonist was a reflection of an aspect of my self.

Could the great Hemingway be wrong?
I don't think so. I may have cut too deep into that vein and almost bled to death, drowning any reader in the process. Maybe a smaller, more delicate cut would suffice. I should have mixed in a dash of humor and a liberal sprinkling of good characteristics to counteract the negative earlier on in the book. It is fiction after all!