…or How I learned to stop worrying about the noise around me and just write….
If you are on Facebook or Twitter or a member of any number of groups that involve readers and writers, you’ve seen it or heard it.
“I got a bad review.”
“I got a bad review…can you vote it down for me?”
“I got a bad review, can I get it removed?”
“Rant rant rant against bad reviews……”
“These people who write bad reviews don’t understand how much it takes to create….to write….to imagine…to dream…”
I’ll tell ya, honey, to this last one – no, they don’t, nor do they care.
Now, I’ve written before how people who write reviews should be kind and constructive and all that jazz. Real nice, right? All kum ba ya and nice-nice, yakity yak.
Today, I’m totally putting my thing down, flipping it and reversing it.
Go read some of the review of some of the most popular writers. You think your review is bad? Come on now. Your review writers are amateurs.
They.Are.Vicious. (And well-deserved, some of them, if you ask me,)
Your review writers are amateurs compared to these gems:
“This is easily one of the worst books I’ve ever read. And bear in mind that I’ve read John Grisham.”(This only made me laugh because….I’m not John Grisham, who has to wipe his tears with thousand dollar bills….)
Point is authors, writers, creators….you are going to be criticized and critized in the following ways:
1. Viciously
2. Nastily
3. Unfairly
4. Constructively
5. Cruelly
6. Harshly
7. Heartlessly
8. Callously
Check out that list again. Now read it again. Again.
Hurts, don’t it?
It’s going to happen. This, I can promise you. And, more than once.
The one thing you have to consider – are you going to let it stop you? Are you going to waste your time lamenting to your author friends how you’re so misunderstood? How you wish this evil review writer would try to write a book and see how hard it is? Look up quotes saying it’s easy to criticize but hard to create?
I did it. Until I realized:
1. What a phenomenal waste of time it is
2. How much power it gives the person who wrote the thing in the first place
3. What a phenomenal waste of time it is
4. How it cripples your creative mojo
5. Did I mention how much of a waste of time it is? Yes? Well, mark it down again.
So the next time you wander over a particularly nasty review of your book, take heart that it doesn’t say this:
“Heed my warning. This is the worst book ever written.”
I promise you, this is a quote from an Amazon review. To add insult to injury, the writer took the time to make NOTES and tick off every single thing they found wrong in the book. Just wow. On top of that, over 90 percent of people who encountered the review found it helpful. Yikes!
How about this:
“XXXX isn’t just a bad author, he’s a vile one.”
Amen Ms. Dahlia! Amen. We all have a job to do. Their job is to review and in some cases criticize. No writer should let what they do stop us from what we do. My first review was scalding. They hated the book. The only thing they liked was my cover but I soon got over it when I read reviews from all the people who loved my book. ALWAYS KEEP WRITING because in the end you are writing for the yourself and the people who LOVE your books.
Amen!
Nailed it!! 🙂