Reflections on Reviews

Reading is such a subjective experience. I may absolutely love a book while my best friend is bored stupid with it.

Example 1: Mockingjay (the last of The Hunger Games series). Ugh. I loathed it! And many people did too. But just as many people loved it.

Example 2: Audiobook for my award-winning book Torn Canvas. The guy who did this was my dream narrator. When he reads the story, it sounds just like it did in my head as I wrote it.

• One reviewer panned his performance because it was "melodramatic."
• Another reviewer dissed it because they said he was "monotone."

Melodramatic.

Monotone.

The same book but an opposite reader experience. Neither is invalid. Readers experience what they experience.

But, because I understand this, if I cannot give a book at least three stars, I won't review it.

I recognize that I may have had a "melodramatic" or "monotone" experience with a particular book, but that doesn't mean the next person who reads or listens to it won't have a 5-star experience. But if I trash it, they may pass it up and miss out.

This happens to be my personal philosophy. I read 165 books last year (mostly listened to), and I've already done 25 this year. I haven't rated all of them.

Author Beth Revis wrote a humorous blog post that puts it in perspective and helps wounded authors recover from hurtful reviews. And there are always bad reviews no matter who the author is as, as Beth cites in her post.

Click here to read Beth's post for a smile.

April IWSG - Negative Reviews

Click here to find out more and to see a list of other IWSG blogs.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Short and sweet on my end. I know this is A to Z month, so I'm just going to share author Beth Revis's brilliant post about handling negative reviews.

Click Here

Reflections on Being an Author

This is actually a post worthy of Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group. I've wondered a few times if I ought to join, and my recent experience kind of confirms that perhaps I should.

I caught myself (and it's not the first time) doing something I used to do a lot when I was a kid, especially a teen. You see, I never gave people a chance to say anything bad about me--because I made sure I beat them to it. There wasn't anything anyone could say bad about me that was worse than what I'd already said about myself.

The really sad thing is that, at my age, I dang well should be over that.

So what have I done? Lately, I've found myself warning my friends that they might not like my book. I keep imaging a friend or loved one picking it up, thinking they're going to love it . . . and finding that they hate it.

Awkward!

I know on an intellectual level there will be people who don't like my book. Author Beth Revis has a wonderful blog post on dealing with negative reviews here.

I guess my insecurities erupt full force in their adolescent power because some of the people who aren't going to like my book won't necessarily be strangers. Some of the people I care about may not like my baby.

My active imagination shows me in a social setting while I stare at their deer-in-the-headlights expressions as they scramble for tactful ways to give me a social white lie. Of course, I have to admit that I've got a couple of sons who would never give me a social white lie. They'd lay it out before me in untempered honesty:

"Your book sucked, Mom."

And, you know, that's okay. Really. Because I would be surprised if either of them liked my little adventure romance. Example--at least one of them thinks George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is the epitome of great literature.

Um, I hate that series.

I've tried reading the first book twice and quit both times--finally checking out Wikipedia to see where it was headed. I knew I didn't want to read any further. Just not my kind of story.

Marketing myself--and my intellectual property--will probably be one of the toughest things I've ever done. Maybe even harder than it was to hand over that manuscript to be read for the first time.

And I'm surely not alone in this. Obviously, I need to do better with the positive self-talk. What do you do to either deal with your own doubts or to prepare yourself to deal with criticism?

Social Media

Today's post was inspired by a discussion going on in my writing group at Dave Farland's Writing Groups. One of our members, Justin Jeppesen, who is new to the Twitter thing (me, too) asked for some suggestions. I'm going to share Robin Week's response because it's so good:

For Twitter:

• Participate in the hashtag chats, like #yalitchat and #askagent (when you see one going, click on the hastag and it will take you to a screen where you can see what everyone else is tweeting with that hashtag)--everyone there will see your tweets and you'll pick up followers that way.
• Comment on others' posts, start up conversations, etc--don't just tweet about your books: be interesting
• Follow the people you'd like to have follow you--an email is sent to everyone you follow (well, depending on their settings) and a lot of people will auto-follow or will at least check you out for a possible follow if you follow them first
• DON'T connect Twitter to Facebook--it is annoying to those who follow you in both places. Use Twitter for little things and Facebook for larger things and, for huge things, post separately on both.

For the Blog:

• Have a regular schedule of posting, so your followers can anticipate your posts (I've just started posting Tuesday night and Saturday morning--if I can keep it up for a few weeks, I'll post my schedule on my blog), too.
• Interesting titles, to entice followers and others to read your posts
• Participate in blogfests--those are when you register your list your blog on the host's blog with the other participants and then do something specific with your own blog--there's an April A-Z blogfest going on in April, if you're interested: posting every day but Sundays in April--then everyone is encouraged to visit the other blogs in the fest
• Tweet about your new blog entries (this is where your interesting titles come in) with a bit.ly link to the blog post

In General:

• Social media is SOCIAL--you need to get out there, comment on others' blogs, comment on tweets, etc. Elana Johnson (who has almost 2000 blog followers) went through a period where she commented on 50 blogs a day!!
• Don't diss others--everyone can see your tiff and no one thinks you're cool when you're whining

And as Robin also suggests, you can check out Beth Revis' post on this topic here.




How comfortable are you with social media? Do you find it difficult to balance all the other aspects of your life--like writing--with the time it takes to Twitter, Facebook, Blog, etc.? How are you making it work for you?