So, last week on The Whine Seller I wrote a post called Giving the people what they want even when you no longer understand why they want it. This post centered around a product I was refusing to sell, despite the fact that people still wanted to buy it, because I personally didn’t understand why anyone would want it. It was a post about being stubborn to the point of stupidity and trusting too blindly in your gut feelings over cold hard facts. On missing out on money for no reason other than pig-headedness, if you will.

This post may be the counterpoint to that. 

Last year, I came up with an idea for a Christmas play. It was dark and weird. Two things that aren’t necessarily desirable in a Christmas play, I’ll grant you.

I started to talk it out with friends and family as I do all my new ideas and was surprised to discover that almost everyone had a negative reaction. The best case was “I don’t know about that, Hill…” said while wrinkling their face and some people (including my mother who had some absolute GEMS to say about this idea that I will share with you later) actually tried to talk me out of writing it. It wasn’t that they thought the idea was bad. It was that the subject matter was too dark or weird or crossed some line.

But I liked the idea and I was convinced that all the objections were because people were picturing it one way in their head and that was wasn’t the way I was going to write it. I started to write the play (you’ll have noticed “Holiday Play” was on the list of projects I worked on in 2011 even though I’ve never really talked about it before).

It was terrifying.

Normally, when I start something new, I’ve had at least a few people tell me that my idea “sounds good” or at least indicate that they’d be interested to read it. This time out, I was writing something I knew all of my usual cheerleaders were leery about (there’s a pun in there I’m frankly disappointed in myself for not being able to make). I was writing in this bubble where I was putting words on paper and, instead of thinking about pleasing my ideal reader, I was thinking about fighting against their prejudices about the idea in the first place. It was a very strange and lonely place to be writing from.

Especially since I was writing a comedy. I didn’t just need to win people over. I needed to win them so far over they’d laugh.

Side note: Many people have told me that I’m funny. My bestselling play is a comedy. But I do NOT think I’m funny at all and when I’m trying to be funny on purpose? It’s this hopeless mess of over-thinking everything and convincing myself I’m a total failure. So writing this play was basically this absolute nightmare for me. It mostly involved my shaking my head at words on the screen going, why did I ever think I could be funny?

I knew they only way I’d get through this was to give myself a deadline and so I forced myself to finish the play by last Friday. And I’ll be darned if I didn’t rather like the fool thing now that it was finished. Things came together in ways that felt like someone else set them up and… like everything I write these days… the play is almost a metaphor for itself. It’s weird and dark still, yes, but it also ended up sort of holiday-heart-warming in a strange, what-goes-on-in-the-deep-recesses-of-Hillary’s-twisted-mind kind of way. But I’d thought it was a good idea from the start so my opinion didn’t really matter… what would readers say?

My husband is always my first reader because I talk out so much of anything I write to him that he’s usually the one with the closest perspective on what I’m trying to do. But I’d been so weird about this play when I was writing it, I’d told him almost nothing about this one. He was also one of the many who didn’t think this play was the greatest idea.

He didn’t want to read it. Usually, I send him something and it’s read before I come downstairs to tell him he doesn’t have to rush and read it right away. I finally had to beg him on Monday to read it because I wanted to send it to beta readers before the end of this week. He was in a terrible mood and was nagged into reading it so I was dreading his response. I called my godmom and talked about books for a while to distract myself while he read it.

I went back into the kitchen to hang up the phone. Husband turned from his computer and said, “I’m almost done, one second.” But he was smiling. This massive smile. This would seem more impressive if you’d see the horrifying bad mood he’d been in before. But he was downright cheery all of the sudden.

So I go upstairs to basically do the maternity ward waiting room pace because how am I supposed to concentrate on anything now? Clearly the play was not terrible. Or was it so terrible he was laughing at how bad it was?

He loved it. Usually I get a “It’s good, but…” after a first read but he actually gushed about it and told me he wanted to see it on stage so badly no less than three times. I was totally thrown by this response.

I’d been expecting him to tell me it was a mess, to hate it. I’d forced him to read it when I did because I’d expected to do at least a week of edits before I sent it to readers. He had literally one line he had a problem with… we worked on it and I started digging up beta readers that night. I wrote the play in such a bubble that my perspective on it is so horribly muddled, I’m wasn’t even sure I should believe him. Granted, he’s my husband, he’s never going to tell me something sucks but he’s also a pretty critical reader. If it was as terrible as it seemed in my head, he would have said so.

So, I sent out an open call to my friends to get some beta readers and am getting responses back. And while I’m waiting to hear what a few more people say, one thing seems to be abundantly clear: I was right to follow my gut and write this play even though everyone else said nay. I was, as I suspected, onto something.

But there’s still one more hurdle. The person with the most objections to it from the start hasn’t read it yet. So I’ll be waiting in tense anticipation until I hear what my mother has to say.

The lesson here? Sometimes being stubborn when it’s something you believe in can pay off in the end.

Have you ever stuck with your gut to good results?