Handling Reviews and Critiques: Part 3 (Reviews)

When I originally wrote this blog post it ended up too long for a single post, so I have split it up into ‘groups’ as I think of them, and will post them in sequence. Today, Reviews.

If you are going to write, then almost certainly at some point you are going to have to share that work in some way with other people. Whether that is reading it to your kids, letting your significant other take a look, your best friend, your writing group, strangers on the internet with whom you have some tenuous social connection, or publishing it and having a wider distribution to strangers with whom have no connection. And while all of these people will have opinions, not of all of them will be “this is perfect!”. So how do we deal with that? I’m going to share the advice that I have found helpful, the wisdom of which I credit to other writers, editors and agents. Take what you find useful!

Reviews:

At some point someone else is going to publish an opinion on your work. If you are lucky Amazon or Goodreads, but maybe somewhere smaller, perhaps someone on twitter, or a short-story review in a blog or magazine. There are a couple of different approaches here:

1. Decide critiques are for authors, but reviews are for readers. This is probably good for your mental health. Eventually, there will be people, strangers on the internet, who just don’t ‘get’ your work and won’t hold back about writing a poorly worded review telling everyone about that and assigning you one star for your work rather than themselves for their reading ability 😉 If you are not capable of framing it in that way then perhaps not reading these is best.
2. If you can’t resist reading it OR you realize there may be valuable data in it – treat it as above. Read it. Don’t respond. Give yourself a day, then read it again and see if there is anything in it that is useful for you. Not for the work you’ve published. But perhaps in the sequel. Or other works. Or promotion or marketing.
3. The compromise is to recognize potential value but also recognize potential damage to mental health. Here, you ask someone to pre-screen. A good friend, familiar with your work, that can send you all the good reviews, as we all like that, and at this stage it’s out in the world so it’s time for the accolades and celebration. Editing time is past. But who can also, intelligently make copies of salient, relevant comments that might help with the sequel, understanding reader expectations etc. These, they would put aside for you so you could come to these in a dispassionate moment, knowing it was not positive, but there might be value to you to knowing what is said.

Thanks for reading! How do you handle criticism in its many forms? As always, thoughts, suggestions and criticisms (!) welcome below in the comments section.