How I Respond to a Bad Review

It is inevitable that if you write a book or play or craft a giant spacecraft out of left over Big Mac cartons that not everybody will like your contribution to the world of arts and culture. When your work first emerges into public view by cracking the shell of creation the world (at least your family and friends, well some of your friends) gush and goo over your work. In some cases they actually like it and in others they are hopeful that this might lead you into a life where some stability prevails and doesn’t have bars on the windows.

But sooner rather than later someone, usually a non-professional and completely uneducated idiot (did I really say that?) will start gently pointing out the flaws in your work. These people who are probably wanna be writers who’ve never published anything since their high school newspaper let them cover the talent show at Christmas one year (ouch!!) want to start pointing out the minor weaknesses in plot development and the shallowness of your main protagonist. How dare they?

Some even stoop so low as to offer such faint praise of the hidden greatness of the work but this is only to cover up their own inadequacies and to allow them full rein to vent their spleen about the mumbled dialogue and occasional, maybe a few, ok, ok, a lot of misspellings and grammar errors. And then they have the gumption about nearly destroying both author and love child to suggest that I could do better the next time. What? Pour my soul out to the world and let them drip hot boiling grease all over it. Never. Well not right away. Maybe soon.

So how do I deal with a bad review? I ignore it, obviously.

Mike Martin is the author of The Walker on the Cape, a Sgt. Windflower mystery. His new book, The Body on the T will be released in May, 2013.