Criticism: The Highest Form of Flattery
Speaking as a writer, I was always told by mentors and peers that you write for yourself. You should write whatever you would like to read.
This is great advice if you want to sit on stacks of unpublished work that no one will ever read.
But if you want to be a working writer, you need feedback from your readers. For an artist to survive in the market and—and excuse me if I sound pompous here—“hone his craft,” he needs to know what he’s doing right and wrong. Otherwise, he might be making some of the same mistakes over and over again.
Those who read for pleasure usually never consider writing reviews. Their idea of a review is telling their co-worker Dave that they enjoyed reading a book over the weekend and if Dave likes this sort of thing, it would be in Dave’s best interest to look into said book.
Unless you, as a writer, work with this Dave character, you might never get this valuable information.
Reviews are for the writer. Reviews help. They really do.
There are those that say they never read the reviews. I never understood these people. Do these folks live in a bubble where the outside world never intrudes on them?
You should always read the reviews. You just don’t react to every review.
Reviews might say that you did everything right as a writer. Reviews might say that you did everything wrong. But the reviews that truly help are the ones that give you a mixture of both. Y’know, the honest ones.
Unless you are a talentless hack like Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout, every writer will have something a reader will connect with. (And if truth be told, even Trout inspired a few, as Breakfast of Champions and my novel The Mall exemplified.)
Sometimes the most passionately negative reviews tell you just as much about what you’re doing right as what you’re doing wrong. If a reader hates the fact that your style resembles Ray Bradbury or that they despise your lavish technical Tolkienesque details, that review may inform those readers that adore Bradbury or Tolkien that you are their kind of writer, that you should just “keep on keepin’ on,” as the song goes.
For a writer that is just starting out in the industry, a review is the only feedback he’ll ever get outside of his own family and friends--or if you’re lucky enough to have the ear of an industry professional that actually gives you something more detailed than a form letter. (You know the ones: “We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but…”) In my experience, the comments I’ve received from agents and publishers on occasion have been invaluable to my career as a writer. After I got past my wounded ego, I realized that those people didn’t have to tell me what they liked or disliked about my work, but they felt that I was good enough to justify their time in communicating something extra that would help me grow and evolve.
That’s really all we ask for as writers.
Actors and singers get instant reaction from their work in the form of applause or boos.
Writers have to wait for the reviews.
(Bryant Delafosse is the writer of the new supernatural thriller The Mall, which will be available as a free promotion on Amazon Kindle on 6/30/12 & 7/1/12)
This is great advice if you want to sit on stacks of unpublished work that no one will ever read.
But if you want to be a working writer, you need feedback from your readers. For an artist to survive in the market and—and excuse me if I sound pompous here—“hone his craft,” he needs to know what he’s doing right and wrong. Otherwise, he might be making some of the same mistakes over and over again.
Those who read for pleasure usually never consider writing reviews. Their idea of a review is telling their co-worker Dave that they enjoyed reading a book over the weekend and if Dave likes this sort of thing, it would be in Dave’s best interest to look into said book.
Unless you, as a writer, work with this Dave character, you might never get this valuable information.
Reviews are for the writer. Reviews help. They really do.
There are those that say they never read the reviews. I never understood these people. Do these folks live in a bubble where the outside world never intrudes on them?
You should always read the reviews. You just don’t react to every review.
Reviews might say that you did everything right as a writer. Reviews might say that you did everything wrong. But the reviews that truly help are the ones that give you a mixture of both. Y’know, the honest ones.
Unless you are a talentless hack like Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout, every writer will have something a reader will connect with. (And if truth be told, even Trout inspired a few, as Breakfast of Champions and my novel The Mall exemplified.)
Sometimes the most passionately negative reviews tell you just as much about what you’re doing right as what you’re doing wrong. If a reader hates the fact that your style resembles Ray Bradbury or that they despise your lavish technical Tolkienesque details, that review may inform those readers that adore Bradbury or Tolkien that you are their kind of writer, that you should just “keep on keepin’ on,” as the song goes.
For a writer that is just starting out in the industry, a review is the only feedback he’ll ever get outside of his own family and friends--or if you’re lucky enough to have the ear of an industry professional that actually gives you something more detailed than a form letter. (You know the ones: “We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but…”) In my experience, the comments I’ve received from agents and publishers on occasion have been invaluable to my career as a writer. After I got past my wounded ego, I realized that those people didn’t have to tell me what they liked or disliked about my work, but they felt that I was good enough to justify their time in communicating something extra that would help me grow and evolve.
That’s really all we ask for as writers.
Actors and singers get instant reaction from their work in the form of applause or boos.
Writers have to wait for the reviews.
(Bryant Delafosse is the writer of the new supernatural thriller The Mall, which will be available as a free promotion on Amazon Kindle on 6/30/12 & 7/1/12)
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