If Your Book is your Baby, What Kind of Parent are You?

(Disclaimer: This is meant to be all in fun, not a serious remark on any real parents out there.)

1. The Helicopter Parent: Do you worry over every little detail in your book? Do you stay awake at night wondering if your character should have pointed at the Dodge and said “this truck” or “that truck”? Which one sounds better? And if the hero’s eyes are green but he wears an orange tee-shirt at one point will that clash? Should he know this? Should the girl comment on it? Should he wear a button-up instead?

2. The “My Child Does Nothing Wrong” Parent: Do you hand out your book for edits and then send off an offended three page reply when somebody comments with something as innocuous as “If you switched these two sentences the cadence of the paragraph might be better.”?

3. The “Strict” Parent: You carefully craft character cards and a full, detailed outline before anything else is thought of or written. You write a specific number of pages every single day exactly according to the outline. You have a timeline in which to get this novel done and you achieve your goal.

3. The “New Age” Parent: You don’t really need to plan or edit. Everything is better in its original, organic form.

4. The “Neglectful” Parent: I’ll do something about it… eventually.

I have a tendency toward Neglectful Parent, with occasional bouts of Strict Parent. Does that mean my novels are going to need therapy?

I’d suspect that most of us are just “Normal Parents” with leanings towards some of these silly stereotypes. So tell me, to which do you tend do you tend to gravitate?