This is Episode 2, where we're still in the "enlistment" part of process. This life isn't cut out for everyone. In Episode 1, we talked about what it takes to "make it," which encompasses a lo-ho-hot of work. This is not a career for the fainthearted, and you need to know that from the jump. I'm sure I'll bleed more and more people every week, but that's kind of the point. If you're going to succeed, and I really do want you to succeed, then you need to know what you're getting into so you can make the best decisions you can. I've been in the trenches a few years now, so I can tell you where the pitfalls are, so you can avoid them if at all possible.
(Hell, I'm still learning these ever-changing rules myself, which means a lot of these won't just be information for you, but reminders for me.)
The more I see some of today's writers virtually shoot themselves in the foot regarding reviews, the more I realized that we have to move The Talk up ahead of schedule. Apparently this is something writers need to know going in and somehow don't, putting their entire careers in jeopardy as a result. So we're going to chat about this a bit today, and it's going to cover quite a bit of ground. I suggest you grab a drink and get comfortable. We're going to be here a while.
Ready? Okay.
REJECTIONS, CRITIQUES AND THE OLD PROCESS
Back in the old days, rejection and critique were built into the old model of publishing. You wrote a first draft? Congratulations. Now try to sell that puppy to an agent who has to get excited about your work. That process took time and effort, with a lot of failure along the way. Even books that turned out to be bestsellers were rejected many times before they finally saw the light of day. It took Agathe Christie five years to land her publishing deal. Dr. Seuss, Louis L'Amour, J.K. Rowling, J.D. Salinger, Stephenie Meyer... all these writers who went on to astonishing financial or critical successes originally had their work rejected by scores of editors and agents. Kathryn Stockett received 60, count 'em, 60 rejections on The Help, which not only went on to be a bestseller BUT an Oscar-winning film. Even the Master (and one of my personal writing heroes,) was well acquainted with rejection, from the time he was a teenager.
“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” - Stephen King
Only the battle-scarred few who persevered through this grueling process made the cut, something Stephen talked about in regards to his father. Pick up on this biography at 8:00 minutes in:
As you can see, rejection worked a little bit like the warped wall on American Ninja Warrior.
You usually don't scale a curved, 14-foot wall on the first go, no matter how physically fit you are. You have to train yourself. For writing, this means you have to brave criticism about your work. You'll still fall on your face from time to time, especially at the beginning. This will bruise your ego instead of your body, but it hurts just the same.
The fear of rejection, and the reality of rejection, facilitated the need for honest, often brutal, critiques. Each rejection was a stepping stone, and every critique was a hand up to get you to the next step. They worked together to help make your book, and you, the best you can possibly be so that you would eventually get that "yes," but also be better prepared for the next step beyond it.
That's what made the pursuit of excellence more important than the sale itself. There was (is) no guarantee of money when you sat down to write a book. Back then, you knew that you had to first convince an agent or publisher to get behind you, which was (is) hard to do for untested writers. Some really good books never saw the light of day because the people who needed to make a living wouldn't risk the gamble. The only way you could get anywhere was with a spectacular book that the right person found at the right time. (Another topic we'll eventually get to: Nobody Knows Anything.)
We all understood that was part of the process. More importantly, we understood it was a good thing overall, even if rejections and critiques suck the big one. And let's be real here... they do suck. Readers and critics will tell you to take it on the chin. Don't publish if you can't handle it. But that shit can hurt, I don't care who you are. Writers spend a lot of time and energy, pouring our little hearts into our books. No one wants to hear anyone speak ill of our babies, which we love unconditionally. Everyone wants that gold star or that A+.
And when you're a writer, you've spent those weeks or months inside your own head, with only your voice to guide you. It's easy to lose perspective along the way. There's a lot of euphoria in the creation process. You finish a particularly grueling chapter or write The End after sleepless nights hopped up on nothing more than caffeine and a dream, you want to celebrate... not decimate.
But you need guidance. We all need guidance. If you're writing for yourself, then you can write the story however you want to. But when you're creating a product for millions of consumers, you need perspective. That will only happen when you have someone who can honestly evaluate your work. (And no, your mom generally doesn't count.)
I'll give you an example of perspective. I started writing when I was 11 years old, after a school writing assignment got me some extra attention. After my dad died just the December before, I ceased feeling special. Writing gave that back to me. I latched onto it with both hands. Over the next ten years, I wrote poetry and short stories and even a novella, most of which was received really well. My novella was critiqued in 1985 by my sweet English teacher, who offered a gentle evaluation of where I was weak and where I could be stronger, but generally, overall, I was praised for my efforts. (I believe that English teacher even wrote something about my writing in my yearbook that year.)
So when I wrote my first book, I wasn't at all intimidated about sending my work out to an agent almost the very instant it was written. I maybe tinkered with it a little bit before I sent it in to a local agency in the town where I lived. When I got the response back, the agent said thanks but no thanks, though she gave me a fully edited version of my manuscript.
I don't think there was one page that didn't have at least five red marks on it. It was *dripping* with blood-red ink. My beautiful baby had been figuratively massacred.
I. Was. Devastated. Here I was thinking that I had something special because everyone in my life had always said as much, yet it failed to stand up to scrutiny from an industry professional. It was a rejection and a critique all in one dream-crushing package. And because I was so new to the harsh realities of this business, it wrecked me. I shelved that book and went back to "real life." It took years for me to understand what kind of gift that agent gave me. She edited an entire manuscript - for free - so that I, a clearly brand-new writer, could improve. She wouldn't have done that had she not seen the potential. By the time I returned to writing, because quitting was never really an option, I had a different outlook on the critiquing process. The truth was that I learned more from that brutally honest critique than I had ever learned from years and years of praise. Her words stuck with me, even to this day. That lesson was priceless. It made me a better, stronger writer.
It was part of the process.
By the time I dipped my tippy-toe in the shark-infested waters of screenwriting in 2002, I was ready to show my work and take my licks. I joined a community called Done Deal, which had a forum where you could post your work and get feedback. It became instantly clear that these guys weren't messing around. They'd tell you what they thought and they didn't really bother assuaging your feelings in the process. Buck up, buttercup. This is a business. If you want to be a pro, you are expected to act like one, especially in a collaborative field where content (and sometimes the writers themselves) can change all the way up to the film's completion. (Sometimes even afterwards. Case in point Pretty in Pink, which changed the entire ending based on the feedback of a test audience. We'll talk about this more next week, when I tackle Trusting Your Gut.)
One notorious DD reviewer took particular joy out of ripping these kinds of pages to shreds. He was a bit of an asshole, but most of the time he was right. So I decided to wade out into the deep water and ask him to read my script. Like the manuscript I sent to the agent, this was my first screenplay. I knew he'd tell me the truth and that was vitally important to me. I can stand a few tender feelings as long as I didn't embarrass myself in front of another agent or producer. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and I wanted mine to sparkle.
And yes, he did pick it apart. One of notes said, "This AGAIN? I may need to take a cyanide pill," when I kept repeating the same scene over and over again. When he was done, however, he told me that I had promise AND talent and to keep going. Like the agent... he invested in the potential, showing me how I could reach it. There are things from his critiques (and yes, I asked him to do more than one,) that I still hear in my head today when I write. Why? Because Critques. Are. How. You. Learn. This is why it's imperative that you find someone who is stages ahead of you in your career to help you. That kind of feedback is the finest education you'll ever get.
One of my husband's favorite sayings is if you don't tell someone what they're doing wrong, how are they going to know? (Which is why he's usually reader #1 for everything I write.) Even if it sucks big, blue donkey balls, you have to make peace with the idea that your work will always, always, need improvement. Art is never completed, merely abandoned. I can't read anything I've written in the past without cringing and tinkering and toying and editing - even those books that have already been published. By the time a digital proof of CHASING THUNDER was sent back to me from the publisher to approve nothing more than the formatting, I was still fiddling with content. This was after it had gone through several passes between the publisher and the editor. With each new book, you learn something new. It's impossible not to implement these lessons with everything new you write or everything old you've written.
So trust me when I tell you that there's no greater asset in your life than to have a long list of honest folks who will keep it real when they read your work. They can shine you up like a new penny if you let them.
People who like you will be a little gentler with you, granted. But in a professional forum, you need to know what the problem is so you can fix it. Shortly after finding Done Deal, I joined Zoetrope, another screenwriting community. I had to review several scripts from other writers in order for my work to be read, which taught me how to be an honest, helpful reviewer. This is another imperative skill to learn before you publish, which is probably why that site operated that way. How can you tell what's wrong in your own work if you can't objectively assess the work of another? If you can't figure out what's wrong, or why it fell flat, or didn't connect with you, how are you ever going to know what's wrong in your own work, where it falls flat, and why it doesn't connect? Taking things apart is one of the ways you figure out how to put something together.
Through this process of giving and accepting these critiques, and a lot of them, you gain that valuable perspective I mentioned earlier. You'll find that not all critiques are created equal, and you don't have to make all the changes suggested to you. The plain truth is that sometimes you can do everything right and the material just won't connect with the reader. That's nobody's fault, really. Different strokes for different folks and all that. The more critiques you get, the more you learn which critiques to keep and which to dismiss, which is why it's so damn critical to put your book through these paces. My general rule of thumb is that your gut already knows where you missed the mark. A good critique will force you to deal with it before you blow it with the fickle reading audience that has far too many books to choose from to indulge second chances. An ineffective critique (meaning, one that you don't necessarily agree with or heed,) will teach you how to shrug your shoulders and declare, "You can't please everybody." Not everyone is going to like what you do or agree with how you do it. *And that's okay.* Part of the growth process is filtering all this information to your benefit.
So what does all this have to do with the review process?
I'm so glad you asked.
NEW BOSS SAME AS THE OLD BOSS
Since the beginning of the self-publishing age, many writers got to skip that brutal obstacle course full of rejections and critiques at the very dawn of their writing careers. They went from newbie to professional in the click of the button, without all the steps that used to get you from point A to point B, and in doing so, prepared you for point Z. Those steps were necessary so that amateur writers had all that glorious perspective by the time the reviews from the public came. Like I said, not all critiques are created equal. Every single writer in the world has had that one review that was so outrageous, you almost had to laugh. In fact, an entire Tumblr was created to highlight the one-star reviews for classic literature. These are some of the greatest novels of our time and even they cannot escape the vitriol of a frustrated reader, who simply wanted to love a book but didn't.
A review simply captures a reader's feelings, whether good or bad. Here's an example of a 1-star review that I wrote for an author who was a long-standing favorite of mine when I was a young adult, but wrote a bestselling book that both disappointed and offended me entirely. As you can see, I minced no words expressing how I felt about it. It wasn't to correct her work, but to simply state what I got out of it as a reader, which wuddn't good.
Unfortunately, that's something that many newly professional writers are missing. They are so ill-equipped for criticism that they see every review as such a life-or-death thing. They abhor low-rated reviews and the readers who post them, because that low-rated review could put off potential new readers, blocking the writer from inching further up the wall. This has led to the whole Authors Behaving Badly phenomenon, where authors and reviewers clash over negative reviews, and the ease and temptation of cyber-bullying rears its ugly head in some ridiculous "them" vs. "us" scenario.
You have to understand something. For readers, nothing has changed. How we get our books to them has undergone a complete revolution, but how they get the books they read hasn't. How they treat the books they read hasn't. What they expect from a book, an author and the reading experience itself, hasn't. When they plunk down hard-earned cash for a book, they expect to enjoy it. If they don't, they have no problem telling all of their friends, same as before. Good word of mouth will make an unknown book soar right up the bestseller charts, while bad word of mouth will push the book further down the slush pile we all must navigate now that anyone can publish a book, whether it's been put through the paces or not. Those first drafts that delusional newbie writers used to send to publishers are now online, right along with a price tag. It's a product now, and consumers are going to state their opinions accordingly, even if they're "wrong," even if they're mean, and even if they're unfair.
A reader review is nothing more than an editorial piece where they can and should write what they think about it. And we, as writers, should encourage them to be honest, even if it's not glowing. In the end, the passion that they demonstrate to even *write* a review is a good thing for you. My whole career started with a timely review from someone who had a lot of influence. And you know what happened? Some of the things that people loved about the book, others hated. It's a numbers game eventually, particularly the better you sell and the more of a splash your book makes, and yes... that attention will draw those who get off on crapping all over something popular just because they can. For some folks, going against the grain is a way to get some attention. You see this more and more if the author becomes a celebrity of sorts, because the fight for their attention is even harder. If ten people tell you your book is wonderful and they love it, and one person says it sucks, who is going to stand out?
It still boils down to preferences and perspective. What leads one to post a 5-star rating would force another to leave a 1-star rating. There are nearly 2300 ratings over on Goodreads for GROUPIE, and 76 of them are 1-stars. Does it hurt? Of course it does. I'm human, made of flesh and bone. But I don't fight them or challenge them... hell, most times I don't even read them. Eventually I came to realize that even a negative review isn't always negative for the book. If someone writes something ridiculous, such as bullying reviews that do little else but attack a writer, savvy buyers will recognize this. Many readers I've seen read the bad reviews first and skip the glowing, 5-star reviews entirely. (Thanks to yet another industry, 5-star reviews are easy to buy and fake without a reader ever even touching a book, which makes current readers distrustful of very highly rated books with no balance.)
They know that not everyone can love the same book, or even rate/review fairly and objectively. But somewhere along the line, we authors have seemed to forgotten it.
Thanks to today's market, we writers put way too much emphasis on the reader review. It's only one small part of what sells a book. What does your cover look like? How does your blurb read? Are your first five or ten pages as killer as they can be? Are there other reviews on the book, to help balance the dialogue? All of those factor into a reader's choice to buy your book. A 1-star rating/review is not the end-all, be-all. It just feels like it, because like I said... everyone wants the gold star. Everyone is looking for the A+.
You're not always going to get it, just refer to the Tumblr I referenced above.
You need to keep it all in perspective. Some writers can't or won't do this. When they see a negative review, they feel the need to engage the reviewer, particularly if the review was nasty. I understand where they are coming from. It hurts to get a bad review. It's scary to get a bad review. We all worry about our ratings. It's impossible not to, considering negative ratings and rankings hurt our overall brand and jeopardize every new sale that we need in order to survive. And by survive, I mean money-in-your-pocket, food-on-your-table, paying-your-electric-bill, keeping-a-roof-over-your-head survival. Our brand is sacred to us. It has to be.
But nothing, NOTHING, torpedoes your brand more than how unprofessionally you act in the face of these reviews. Remember nothing has changed for the reader. They expect you to take it on the chin just like those other writers who have been through the ringer and back simply to get their book published. If you're not used to harsh or brutally honest critiques, it can come as quite the shock to the system to read something harshly written about your work. Like I said before, used to be that you became accustomed to that PRIOR to publication in the olden days. Today, you take it as it comes. And some people are ill-prepared to handle it.
AUTHORS BEHAVING BADLY: A CAUTIONARY TALE
The most egregious example of this occurred last year, when a well-connected new writer wrote an essay for the Guardian on stalking one of her online critics. And when I say stalked, I mean she physically drove to this lady's house and went up to her door. She had the burning need to confront this person face-to-face over what she felt was an unfair review from a cyber-bully. The problem apparently started prior to her book's publication. She had a traditional publisher, (which should have prepared her for what she was about to face, but apparently there were more issues at play with this particular individual.) Said publisher sent preview copies to bloggers and such, a common practice to generate buzz on an upcoming novel. This aspiring novelist decided to go to Goodreads and check out what people were saying, even while, admittedly, she was still in that "post-partum" phase of writing.
If you're unfamiliar, this is when the euphoria from creating your book subsides and crippling doubts and insecurity creep in, whispering the five scariest words any writer can hear, "What if nobody likes it?" You start to second-guess everything, even those things that got you so excited to write the damn book in the first place. Like I said, without a litany of honest feedback, your perspective is skewed. All you hear is your own voice. Well, she decided to add reader voices to the din, which is where it all started to go horribly, horribly wrong.
She claims that most of these reviewers were giving either one-star or five-star reviews, with no real gray area in between. It's kind of hard to keep perspective when you volley between such extremes, especially when you, yourself, have questionable confidence about the material. And then... Blythe happened.
“Fuck this.... I think this book is awfully written and offensive; its execution in regards to all aspects is horrible and honestly, nonexistent... I can say with utmost certainty that this is one of the worst books I’ve read this year, maybe my life.”
Ouch.
That review is lifted right from Hale's own account from the Guardian. If you check Goodreads, Blythe's review now reads simply, "Fuck this." Not sure if she's talking specifically about the book or the troubling events that followed, but it's apt either way. (I haven't read the book in question, but no matter if it was a great book or a sucky book, this reviewer is entitled to her opinion on the matter either way. She's allowed to word it the way she wants and post it for others to read. It's simply an opinion, it doesn't need to be right or wrong.)
Hale was told, repeatedly, not to respond. “DO NOT ENGAGE,” another writer told her. “You’ll make yourself look bad, and she’ll ruin you.” But Hale found that she couldn't let it go. Her curiosity turned into a quest. She began to research (i.e. stalk) Blythe online, finding more and more information on her behavior, which allegedly been called into question before. The whole demented story ends with an admittedly obsessive Hale essentially catfishing what she believed to be a catfisher - a blogger who posted negative book reviews under an assumed identity.
You know how you never hear Stephen King physically tracking down his detractors? He's too busy writing his next book to worry about it. Which is why he has a career spanning more than four decades, with more nearly 60 titles to his credit in books alone. He has perspective.
“If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.” - Stephen King
The whole thing was just crazysauce. If Hale's career is "ruined," it wasn't the reviewer's fault. We got to witness someone in their professional infancy, shooting themselves in the foot and wrecking their own brand in the dawn of their own career. Even if Blythe wasn't really who she said she was online, her biggest crime was that she snarked about books she was believed were bad on a website that was created for readers to share their thoughts about books. The fact that Ms. Hale decided to make it an epic holy grail resulting in sketchy, nay criminal, behavior says way more about her character than it does any legion of "bullies" online.
Granted, you can get shaded as an author behaving badly for a variety of reasons, not all of them fair. There are some who expect you to put aside being an individual as part of your brand, so you end up bound and gagged behind your keyboard, chained to your own limitations as a public figure. This can impact participating in social media, where you become an extension of your brand, rather than a person with thoughts, opinions and the permission to miss the mark every once and a while. You'll fuck up sometimes. You're human. It happens. Things are going to hurt, and you're entitled to feel the pain. You just have to be very, very careful how you handle it.
It sucks to get a bad review. It sucks even more if that reviewer has any kind of influence. The only thing that sucks worse is when an author makes a fool of him-or-herself trying to take a stand against something that is as subjective as personal opinion. Over the course of your career, if you're lucky, you'll write several books. Some readers will read them all, some will only read the ones that interest them. But your brand is the umbrella over all of it - and the best way to alienate people who don't even know your name is to stomp your foot and act like a five-year-old, crying about how unfair it is when you get a bad review.
Tell me where in the world it was written that only the people who love your book are the ones who get to review it?
Oh, that's right. New writers have now implemented that rule when they send out their books to promote them. I belong to several reader groups and they have shared this troubling new trend. New writers, or PR reps for new writers, will send out their work with a caveat that if anyone feels the need to write a lower-rated review, to wait until after the book has launched so it won't affect its initial sales.
Usually that opening week or two is the highest sales period for your book, so negative reviews, they feel, will jeopardize those critical sales.
In an industry where only a scant percent make any kind of money doing this, that's a legitimate concern. By the time it reaches the public, however, you're no longer in control of it, and that's the part that so many new writers just don't seem to get. The genie is out of the bottle. Just learn what you can from it and take it to your next book as part of your ongoing pursuit of personal excellence.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
Keep it all in perspective.
Not everyone is going to love every single book, any more than you love every single book you read. Your odds go up the more polished and perfected a book you produce, which is why honest critique prior to publication is so crucial.
You'll note by this point that I do not use the terms "critique" and "review" synonymously. They are NOT the same things. The critique is for you, usually done before anyone else sees the work. It breaks down the essential workings of the story, from character development to dialogue to structure and pacing. It's written for you to read and to implement, to help you improve and help the book improve. The other is for your potential reading audience, an opinion of a product that is already for sale and available to the public, written for anyone who may be interested in buying it. Though some will say they write these negative reviews to help the writer, most don't think about the author (or their feelings) at all. It's not written for you, but rather written and posted in a safe space to share one's own opinion. One is your business, the other isn't. Once you realize this, you won't have to put such ridiculous (and unrealistic) restrictions on your readers, many of whom will shy away anyway because their voice is being curtailed. What is a review except for another person's opportunity to be heard?
No one owes you a damn thing, even if you offer the book for free. They don't owe you a review at all, that's a courtesy. As a courtesy, how they decide to rank it is completely up to them. How they word it, what they say, all of it is up to them. They're doing you a favor reading your book. Don't be a douche and demand they like it or stay silent. Instead of asking the readers to read down, write UP. Do the hard work to make it the best damn book you can write, and let the chips fall where they may.
You're a professional. Act like one.
You are going to hear no way more than you hear yes in this business, even if it's with a customer's hard-won dollar. If they don't buy your book, guess what? That's a rejection. Sometimes they'll leave scathing critiques of your books thrown in for good measure. Unless you've toughed your hide prior to hitting that publish button, it's a harsh wake-up call.
No writer anywhere, no matter how beloved or successful, avoids this. So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make peace with the idea that reviews are none of your business. Emulate the writers who have long-standing careers: put your head down and write your next book.
