Dissing other Writers

I just took a recent online seminar for Harper/Morrow authors on the author/blogger relationship. These are bloggers who read and review books. Much of the conversation, which was driven by writers asking questions online, was about reviews. How to interact with reviewers, how to react to a bad review. Thank reviewers for a good review?

First of all, I don't read reviews anymore. I found that a bad review could send me into such a downward spiral, it actually affected my writing. So to hear all these writers agonizing about reviews was an eye opener for me. And a very smart writer on the panel said she made it a point not to review writers within her genre. I made a huge note and circled it.

Then I went and erased my only review, which was quite good, of a popular romance writer. My reasoning was that this was the only field I can think of where people publically critique their colleagues and maybe it's not helpful.

Maybe the conversation needs to be about supporting one another. And even though my review was positive, I had a few minor comments that the author can probably figure out for herself and has already heard from someone else. Because overall, if anyone has any idea how much effort it takes to produce a novel, I do. So shouldn't I be applauding her efforts instead of analyzing them?

So from now on, my reviews will be on books that aren't in my genre, which is still a pretty huge number of books. The world has enough critics. Writers get enough feedback. All they are going to hear from me is "good job."