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Rie Sheridan

Suffering the Slings and Arrows

I got my first really bad review the other day. Now, I have had some that weren't totally favorable, but all were valid, and I appreciated the time that had been spent in reading my book and giving a thoughtful opinion on it. This one was just bad. For example, it started like this:

Review: This book is grievously amateur. The writing is filled with weak, overused comparisons...

And ended like this:

Cons: Unprofessional; hard to read; poor dialogue, description, plot, characterization.

There were no "Pros."

It hurt. It always hurts when someone doesn't like your work. But what to do about it? As a writer, there will be times that you must face such criticism. It is practically inevitable (Stephen King and Anne Rice may be immune, but we normal writers aren't...) My immediate reaction was "Ouch! Who does this reviewer think they are?" But that isn't valid either. There were actually some points of her review that I agreed with. The inner monologues are rather stilted. They used to be descriptive text, and I hadn't learned to refine them into thoughts yet. I made a point to give the inner monologues on my next book extra attention to avoid a repetition of the problem.

On the other hand, there were comments that I didn't agree with. I gave them some thought before dismissing them out of hand, but if I didn't feel that they would forward my writing in a positive direction, I didn't dwell on them. No matter what the content of a review, it is still only one person's opinion. There are things in the best review I've gotten that I also take with a grain of salt.

The point is, take what there is of value from a review, and ignore what isn't. Don't let it destroy you or stop you from writing. I don't plan on letting this one bother me. After all, the book has gotten at least six reviews so far, and this is the only truly negative one.

Besides... it is a good excuse for chocolate.