Proud Firsts: The Day I Googled My First Bad Review

Do you think maybe, if Ernest Hemingway was alive today, his quote would sound something more like this?

“There is nothing to writing. You just sit down at a computer, write a book, then bleed out through your eyeballs once the publishing process sets in.”

Because, at least for me, the anemia I experienced from writing my book was nothing compared to the wonderful world of amazon.com…and goodreads.com… and all the other places that shelve millions of books, just waiting to be picked by the right bibliophile, who will love it and take care of it and share his/her five star rating with everyone.

Just for the sake of perspective, Ernest Hemingway’s ” The Old Man and the Sea” got a 3.68 on Goodreads….Ernest Hemingway- the guy who won both a Nobel prize and a Pulitzer for his writing.

It’s easier than ever to be a critic. While still in your pajamas, you can pop open your computer from your living room couch and let the world how much you loved/ hated/could have written your latest read. And the best part? No one even needs to know who you are.

So, you write your book…publish it…and wait for the reviews to roll in- yep, the bad ones too.

Even if you’ve never written anything more than, “have a great summer” in someone’s yearbook, you can still imagine what it might be like to have strangers read whats been in your head then tell you how much they didn’t like it.

I don’t have to imagine it. In fact, I can tell you all about it. I remember my first bad review like it was yesterday…

A shiny, gold one star review for my book, “Being Invisible”- and it was from someone in Germany. And it wasn’t in English. So I had to use google translate to read my own terrible review. It went something like this-

 “I have read the book to 2/3 and hoped for an act . Unfortunately no avail . Even if the last third would have surprised me even more positive, it may unfortunately not be a good book . Pity about the wasted time.” And it was titled,  “Zeitverschwendung,”  which means, “waste of time.” 

So, although something might have gotten lost in translation from German to English, I think the gist is that the reader values his time, and my book seriously impeded it.

I’m  hoping that something might have been lost in translation when they read it too, and that’s why they thought it was so bad. We may never know. But I appreciate the comment nonetheless. When writing my second novel, (A House Made of Bricks- coming soon in case you were wondering,) I worked really hard at making it a lot better at not wasting your time.

The important thing to remember is that we’ve all been there. We’ve all had moments when we knew we’d done something special, only to find out that someone else thought it was a huge zeitverschwendung. So as writers, readers, friends and family, we should always do what we can to encourage each other. But we can also help remind each other not to take it to seriously when it doesn’t turn out how you wanted. And just to give you a reminder, I leave you with this-

“…he’s a short story guy. And he knows how to write about kids. This book though, it’s too long. Gets kind of monotonous. And he should’ve cut out a lot about these jerks and all that crumby school. They depress me.”
-A writer from the New York Times…about “The Catcher in the Rye.”