Dealing with Critics

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Paul Whybrow

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Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK

Most of us are still in the unpublished manuscript stage of being an author, unless we've self-published an ebook online.

On the Colony, we're fortunate to be able to get our writing critiqued by fellow writers, including Agent Pete, in a calm, considerate and constructive way. But, nastier criticism may erupt should your book ever be published, to be reviewed by hired guns working for newspapers and journals, as well as by everyday readers posting their comments online.

Ambling around the internet this morning, I came across this well considered article on bad reviews:

On Bad Reviews - The Millions

(The link in the article to Alice Hoffman's meltdown is broken, so try this one.)

Writer of the article, Canadian novelist Emily St. John Mandel has previous form as an astute commentator on publishing trends.

I think that the best attitude to have with reviews, is that of Joanna Smith-Rakoff, who doesn't read any of them—good or bad.

I have a jaundiced attitude towards reviewers, born of experience and an enquiring suspicious mind. Recently, I was puzzled by a favourable review of a novel, which had been panned by other critics, and a bit of research showed that it was printed by the same publisher that handled the reviewer and that both were represented by the same literary agent! :rolleyes:

As for reviews and comments left by members of the public on sites like Amazon and its book review arm Goodreads, some are thoughtful, while others are the demented rantings of trolls. I helped to manage a community centre for four years, which had a free computer suite. One of the regular users was a creepy dude who spend a lot of time posting inflammatory comments online—he hadn't even read the thread concerned. Eventually, he was banned for trying to access prohibited sites. I could never work out how his mind worked, for he lived in a world of hate, trying to drag everyone down to his pitiful level.

Some brilliant observations of critics have been made over the years:

*Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.
Gene Fowler.

*Critics are like eunuchs at an orgy.
Anonymous

*A critic is like a legless man who teaches running.
Channing Pollock

*Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
Christopher Hampton

*A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan

*I think what I try to do with all of the naysayers, negative comments, or even people that think you can't do it, is I'm trying very hard to use it as motivation and to add that chip on my shoulder.
Erin Andrews

I think, that if a book reviewer is also an author, then their opinion might have some validity, though there have been plenty of literary feuds spawned by spiteful reviews

My attitude towards self-doubt, while writing a novel, and towards any criticism that may come my way when it's published, mirrors the advice given by Hilary Mantel:

The most helpful quality a writer can cultivate is self-confidence—arrogance, if you can manage it. You write to impose yourself on the world, and you have to believe in your own ability when the world shows no sign of agreeing with you.

I decided long ago, that there is zero point in beating myself up. Such an attitude is ideal for being a writer. In four years, I've been told "NO!" 400 times through rejected queries, so my already thick hide is now bulletproof! :D

It may be because I've gone through so much shit in my life, that I've developed a mindset where I really don't give a damn what people think of me—apart from a few valued friends. I'm more concerned with pleasing myself, by producing stories that are of high quality. What I'm finding hard to come to terms with, is that I've actually entered a Popularity Game, in which I have to appeal to lots of people—agents, publishers, potential readers, actual readers who've bought the book + all the attendant publicity twerps, like journalists and media reporters who I'm meant to cosy up to in an attempt at favourable publicity.

As for critics, I really don't have the time for them. I'm reminded of something that Edgar Rice Burroughs had his hero Tarzan of the Apes say, when he was criticised:

"Does a lion listen to the yapping of the jackals?"

What is your attitude to being criticised?

Does it destroy you, or do you use it as a basis for improving...or, do you dismiss it as jealousy?

critic+cartoon.gif
 
Once again, I like your measured analysis, Paul. Criticism is extremely useful in our situation, but be aware of its origin. I was on YouWriteOn for a year when I came back to writing, and found it tough going. The criticisms on my work were often by people with absolutely no clue, and were sometimes throw away one-liners, when each time I spent at least 30 minutes trying to give a helpful review that was often dissed by the recipient. One niggled writer of a fairly dire offering wrote back to me and said, 'Well, lots of other people like it!'

Genuine writers learn to take rejection, criticism, and helpful suggestions as positives in a world where you feel you are sometimes screaming into a black hole. Self-styled book critics judge others because they themselves can't write. You have to feel sorry for them!
 
:):) From the other side of the contract, so to speak, reviews are only opinions. Everyone has them. HOWEVER, they are valid, even if you don't agree with them.

The drive-by one-star or two-star ratings on Goodreads are pointless because when there is no review with them, I can't learn anything as a writer from that. Those, I ignore.

But I have learned as much, if not more, from constructively-written reviews that aren't four or five stars. The key word there is CONSTRUCTIVELY-written. Telling me "your books suck" is not constructive. Telling me "I found this glaring plot hole in your story and here's why" is. I can likely learn from that analysis.

Any writer who can't take constructive criticism needs to hang up their keyboard. It's part of the journey. Go and look at the reviews on large sites like Amazon or Goodreads for well-known authors. They run the entire spectrum.

This is a subjective business and not everyone is going to adore everything you write, nor will they understand that deep, dark meaning you were certain every reader would when you wrote it that way. But that's okay. If, as a writer, you can take away from each review something useful that improves your craft, you've found a gold mine. Because, after all, it's our readers who buy our books. :)

My litmus test for comments about story, characters, or plot points is that if more than one person is saying the same thing, I sit up and pay attention. If it's a nit-picking issue about a word or phrase they don't personally like, whatever. Or sometimes people want to rewrite your work to suit their voice. Well bless their hearts. ;)

But if I'm receiving the same comments about a larger, global issue with that story, I take note of it and figure out if it's something I can improve on for the next story.
 
Most of us are still in the unpublished manuscript stage of being an author, unless we've self-published an ebook online.

I'm sure people's comfort level varies but there are lots of ways to get comfortable with criticism, or to get criticism, or to expose one's writing to the scrutiny of others, and all that means, before one is published. There is for that matter, many ways to get published. I would consider myself unpublished but I have ghostwritten, and so I've gotten feedback on my writing from people who have paid me. I write for people now, and they are my customers, I am exposed to their scrutiny and their criticism. They say the darnedest things. There are critique groups, contests, and that most valuable and rare resource of all, the reader completely devoid of bias who will give their honest opinion.

On the Colony, we're fortunate to be able to get our writing critiqued by fellow writers, including Agent Pete, in a calm, considerate and constructive way. But, nastier criticism may erupt should your book ever be published, to be reviewed by hired guns working for newspapers and journals, as well as by everyday readers posting their comments online.

Well. Bless their hearts!

I've known a few reviewers. The ones I knew strove to find the perfect words to describe what to them were amazing experiences or sometimes not so amazing experiences. A good review written by a critic who is a good writer is a near religious experience. There are some reviewers who enjoy their own venom. But the ones I knew loved art. Calling them hired guns doesn't adequately describe the issue authors have with reviewers. Reviewers ten to love reading and writing. They take hard looks at what it means to do something very difficult well.

Ambling around the internet this morning, I came across this well considered article on bad reviews:

On Bad Reviews - The Millions

I wasn't too impressed with the article. It's an author discussing the impact of reviews on authors which is a worthy subject but not a previously unaddressed topic. I could have forgiven the lack of originality if the article had some pertinent information or new insights, something original to impart in terms of her experience with reviews. So, that's my review of her blog post on critics.

(The link in the article to Alice Hoffman's meltdown is broken, so try
this one
.)

I love Alice Hoffman's writing. I'm not sure what the point is in discussing her meltdown. Why give the whole thing more attention?


Writer of the article, Canadian novelist Emily St. John Mandel has
previous form
as an astute commentator on publishing trends.


Writing articles does not make her an astute commentator. Especially today. Especially now. The reporting and analysis of research and statistics has always been shoddy. It's so much shoddier to take the task on oneself and 'research assistants'. Research assistants in the gig economy are people picking up jobs from Amazon's mechanical turk and the like. It makes me weep to see her call it a 'phenomenon' when she doesn't come close to proving as much.

I think that the best attitude to have with reviews, is that of Joanna Smith-Rakoff, who doesn't read any of them—good or bad.

I have a jaundiced attitude towards reviewers, born of experience and an enquiring suspicious mind. Recently, I was puzzled by a favourable review of a novel, which had been panned by other critics, and a bit of research showed that it was printed by the same publisher that handled the reviewer and that both were represented by the same literary agent! :rolleyes:

These things happen. To authors, this only matters in a world where reviews from reviewers who haven't been 'vetted' decide the failure and the success of a book. I don't think they do and I'm not basing this on research but my own view of human nature. In the end, people do what they want. Mob mentality is common, but successfully pulling it off with something that requires the attention span and concentration required to read a book, absent any other cultural influences such as zeitgeist, is much less common.

As for reviews and comments left by members of the public on sites like Amazon and its book review arm Goodreads, some are thoughtful, while others are the demented rantings of trolls. I helped to manage a community centre for four years, which had a free computer suite. One of the regular users was a creepy dude who spend a lot of time posting inflammatory comments online—he hadn't even read the thread concerned. Eventually, he was banned for trying to access prohibited sites. I could never work out how his mind worked, for he lived in a world of hate, trying to drag everyone down to his pitiful level.

You're talking about two different things here. One is reviews by readers. The other is trolls leaving inflammatory comments online. They aren't necessarily the same unless the troll is leaving reviews. I'm having difficult understanding how the second relates to the first.

I decided long ago, that there is zero point in beating myself up. Such an attitude is ideal for being a writer. In four years, I've been told "NO!" 400 times through rejected queries, so my already thick hide is now bulletproof! :D

It may be because I've gone through so much shit in my life, that I've developed a mindset where I really don't give a damn what people think of me—apart from a few valued friends. I'm more concerned with pleasing myself, by producing stories that are of high quality. What I'm finding hard to come to terms with, is that I've actually entered a Popularity Game, in which I have to appeal to lots of people—agents, publishers, potential readers, actual readers who've bought the book + all the attendant publicity twerps, like journalists and media reporters who I'm meant to cosy up to in an attempt at favourable publicity.

I don't think of it as a popularity game. I figure my writing will only appeal to who it appeals to which is just fine because .... it is written for who it appeals to.

My assessment would be there aren't journalists and publicity twerps to cozy up to like there used to be. I don't think writers, especially ones that aren't hyper successful, are forced to interact with and give their time to publicists and journalists. I mean, what's there to promote? I do think authors are expected to have a social media presence. You can pay someone to do your social media but even if you do it yourself, it's an impersonal thing. Doing social media doesn't entail leaving your house. Publicity used to be different -- it used to be a highly social thing with cocktail parties and dinners and making people who had influence but not necessarily sense feel better about the later so they might be counted on to use the first.

As for critics, I really don't have the time for them. I'm reminded of something that Edgar Rice Burroughs had his hero Tarzan of the Apes say, when he was criticised:

"Does a lion listen to the yapping of the jackals?"

What is your attitude to being criticised?

Does it destroy you, or do you use it as a basis for improving...or, do you dismiss it as jealousy?

Well -- I suppose they're as much jackals as we are hacks -- it probably depends and who's to say?

It's an interesting topic and it's only natural for a bad review or criticism to hurt. But there's also always something to be learned. Reviewers and critics aren't right or wrong about the goodness or badness of writing -- but what they say can be helpful.
 
Vile, destructive, hostile critics. Any critics.
Maybe even a properly potty one.
Ahhhhh.....
Pure Luxury :)
 

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Coincidentally, it's French essayist Michel de Montaigne's birthday today, and he said:

Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, yet he makes gods by the dozens.

I read that quote this morning, and thought how it also applies to the celebrities (including writers) who get revered as if they're gods.
 
Man the God-Maker. Quite so. 4.5 billion years, room for countless ghosts and gods. I made that flea...with pencil, and Man made the pencil, but not the basic ingredients.
 
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