Being a veteran of reviews as Marianne de Pierres, I’m often asked how I view them etc. My answer is usually this… If you get 50% percent good reviews than you’re doing alright. Anything better than that is a bonus and does help to keep you bouyant through the long, quiet writing hours. Any less than that, and you probably need to have a good hard look at your work. It could be that you’ve written something so new and challenging and cutting edge that no one gets it. OTH, you could have written something so obscure that no one gets it. Or it could just be plain bad.
This is a kind of ball park, crude breakdown of how I analyse it.
Most decent reviews provide informed and balanced viewpoints, and declaration of reviewer biases (ie I don’t like this genre to begin with… or everyone but Ian M Banks sucks at this… ). These reviews are worthy of a writer’s time and reflection. Swallow the hurt feeling and learn from them.
Dealing with the really cruel, unbalanced ones is the tough thing. Some writers simply don’t read them. That’s the smart thing to do. Sometimes, however, you find your traitorous mind has sped read it before you can click the page away and the horror of what’s been said replays over and over in your mind.
I reviewed for several years for a state newspaper, among other outlets. As a writer, I understand what goes into the creation of a book, and I decided fairly early on not to review books I really disliked. Why? It’s not fair on ALL the people who are part of giving the book life. See, the author isn’t the only one with an investment in a published work. Consider the editor, the copy editor, the publisher, the trusted readers, the marketing people etc etc. They ALL believe in this book. Otherwise it would never have risen above the clamouring slush pile to triumph as a printed work.
Now don’t misinterpret this a a writer’s plea for nice reviews. It is more an author/reviewer’s wish that more reviewers could be good at what they do – rather than people using their reviews as catharsis for a bad day, week, life. The explosion of blog reviews has been an interesting development in this field. And while it’s probably increased the number of catharsis reviewers, it’s also uncovered some gems – reviewers with true critical genius, the new social commentarians (!?) of our era.
And just as a final thought. It’s often said that anonymity is a writer’s worst enemy. So even in the hour of the darkest, direst review you can take heart that someone, somewhere has had a reaction to what you’ve written. Better than never being read at all. Perhaps.
