I can be easily distracted. I searched foodnetwork.com for a chicken and rice dish and ended up drooling over a Paula Deen recipe promising to produce the best chocolate gooey butter cookies ever. Then I read the reviews from people who actually made the cookie. Some agreed it was the best chocolate cookie they'd ever eaten. They loved the rich chocolate flavor and the soft, gooey centers. Others claimed the cookie was too soft, too bland, too ordinary, a waste of cream cheese.
I'm going to give you the recipe, but I want you to keep the opposing cookie reviews in mind when you face publication. Some readers will give your absolutely delicious work rave reviews. Others may think your writing is flat, uninspired, ordinary.
To encourage yourself, go to Amazon.com and read customer reviews of your favorite books. It's amazing, isn't it, how some folks don't get what you get? They're just at a different place, and that's okay. Negative (and positive) reviews may have more to do with the reader's experience and personal tastes than with your writing. People are different, and it takes some of us a long time to come to that understanding.
Our family has traditional dishes we prepare for holidays. I could be offended because my son-in-law passes on my mother's ambrosia salad. He doesn't like coconut. But when my mother-in-law's coconut cream pie is served, I'm happy to know I'll get dibs on his slice. He's still the best of dads and a beloved elementary school principal. His dislike for that one food ingredient doesn't effect his job performance. Though I enjoy coconut in family recipes, you can have my Almond Joy. I don't like coconut that compact. Readers, like eaters, can also be fickle.
Our preferences determine what we read and write. Our readers have preferences. I once worked with a young woman who read horror, watched horror movies, and became very animated as she talked about what she'd read and the movie she'd just seen. She and I got along, even though I don't read or watch anything scary, vulgar, explicit, graphic, or violent. I prefer gentle reads. I like to see character development. But that's just me. That's my preference. Remember the movie, Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck? I saw the movie based on Oprah's rave reviews. She loved the movie, and I was disappointed. Why did every other word have to be the F word? Couldn't the story be told without profanity?
You don't have to please everybody with your writing, though you do have to please the person who wants to help you put your work in print. An editor who read a first chapter of a children's book for me as a paid critique said I couldn't say my main character's mother lit a cigarette. I could say she smelled like smoke, but showing someone in the act of lighting up wasn't something she wanted to see presented to impressionable young readers. One publishing house, one editor, one opinion. But if that one editor had shown interest in my whole manuscript, you'd better believe my main character's mother would have quit smoking or at least crushed her cigarette before the chapter began.
Say what you must, but stay within editorial guidelines. Also, try to stay away from too many of those best ever chocolate comforts that serve to both celebrate and console. You don't necessarily need to console yourself with chocolate, though it works for me.
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Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies
from http://www.foodnetwork.com/
1 8 oz. brick cream cheese, room temp.
1 stick butter, room temp.
1 egg
1 t. vanilla extract
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