Publication Day, minus 4 …<\/p>\n
As you’ve gathered from a few of last weeks posts, this is the time in the writing cycle when reviews <\/strong><\/a>start to come in thick and fast—and also the time as a writer when you feel acutely aware of just what it means to put yourself and your work on the line.<\/p>\n Yesterday, I blogged<\/a> about my eleven-year journey to get The Heir of Night (The Wall of Night Series Book One)<\/em><\/strong><\/a> to this point—and obviously, by the very act of publishing I am putting my work out there into the world so<\/em> that people can read it. Again obviously, I have written the kind of story I love and hope that there will be others out there who love what I write—but I know that not everyone is going to do that. The world is a very big place and chock full of people with a variety of opinions and tastes, a great many of which are not going to accord with mine.\u00a0 My rational mind knows this to be true, but The Heir of Night<\/em> is a project I have been working on for eleven years. It represents\u00a0 a huge investment of time and energy and imagination and hope and love. So although I know that part of sending a book out into the world has to be letting it find its own path, one can’t help but feel vulnerable as well, on both your own and the book’s behalf, because of the emotional investment that it represents.<\/p>\n Reviewers are amongst the first members of the reading public to see a new book and their role is to provide a level of objective evaluation for readers. (I know readers who follow certain reviewers, knowing from aligning their own reading of books with the reviews, whether this is a person their views are in synch with or not.) Again obviously (or so I believe), no reviewer can be completely objective; he or she will have preferences that affect their response to a work. Nonetheless, the key element of review (in my opinion, anyway) should be an evaluation of positives and negatives, strengths and weaknesses, leading to an overall summation intended to give readers an idea as to whether this is the kind of book they are likely to enjoy.<\/p>\n But as the writer, you still can’t help hoping that reviewers—as the pilot fish of the reading leviathan—will perceive the merits of your hard work, while conversely dreading that they will not!\u00a0 And being human, it can be hard not to focus on the negative review, or even the negative component of an otherwise positive review. Rationally, you may know that the review is just one’s person’s opinion in a world that is full of diverse opinions, and that not everyone is going to like your work—but there is still that “ouch” moment at best, and at worst the feeling battered and bruised for several days at least!\u00a0 (We writers tend to be sensitive wee flowers where our stories are concerned!)<\/p>\n The converse is also true, of course. The glowing review is just as much one person’s opinion (in a world of diverse opinions) as one that is negative or ho-hum. A few years ago, I was privileged to have Owen Marshall<\/strong><\/a> as my writing mentor (through the New Zealand Society of Authors\/Creative New Zealand mentorship programme<\/a>), and he gave me the very valuable advice that ultimately, a writer could not give undue weight to reviews, whether positive or negative, but must focus on staying true to, and pursuing, their muse.<\/p>\n I believe this to be sound advice—if one can manage to follow it (as is the way with all sound advice!) Another way to look at reviews is as another form of feedback, and my approach to feedback has always been to be very glad when it is positive. When it is feedback of the more “constructive” kind, I always ask myself two questions: first, do I believe this to be true? If the answer is yes, then clearly I have something to work on. If the answer is no, then my second response is: “OK, what in my work in its current form could have led someone to form this mistaken opinion—and what can I do to try and prevent similar errors occuring in future?” In other words, feedback is always an opportunity for improvement.<\/p>\n In having these kinds of discussions with other writers, the question has also been asked: but what if the review or other feedback is simply malicious? Or so far off true that you don’t think the reviewer can have read the book–or certainly not your <\/em>book? One response is that of course one always has the option of dismissing a review or other feedback out-of-hand—and sometimes that may be the right decision. At other times, feedback may be given where on reflection, the writer concludes that he or she simply does not agree. The point, <\/em>for me, is that reflection has taken palce before making that decision, in which case it is fine to “agree to disagree” and move on.<\/p>\n Another question is whether as a writer, one should publicly argue the toss when one strongly disagrees with a review, either through one’s own blog, website or other social media outlet, or by posting on other sites, or writing to the review journal etc. So far, my view has been that this is a “better not”, unless one is correcting a clear issue of fact (as opposed to opinion). But in terms of opinion,\u00a0 no matter how much a\u00a0 review may make a writer go “ouch”, or appear malicious or misguided or even downright wrong, there are other avenues to get alternative perspectives on our work out there—particularly now that we live in the wide wide world of internet.<\/p>\n Otherwise, I can’t help feeling that part of the deal of putting one’s work out there into that world of diverse opinion is taking the rough with the smooth, and so when Publisher’s Weekly publishes a review which describes Heir as “mainly standard fantasy” albeit with a “clear portrayal” of the main character and “adding depth with descriptions of the stoic and proud Derai warrior culture”, well—I just have to suck it up! As I have, equally, to remain on my centre when reading the Library Journal’s take that the same book “reinvigorates the epic fantasywith appealing characters and a richly detailed world”. (Although, of course, I much prefer<\/em> the latter view! \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Publication Day, minus 4 … As you’ve gathered from a few of last weeks posts, this is the time in the writing cycle when reviews start to come in thick and fast—and also the time as a writer when you feel acutely aware of just what it means to put yourself and your work on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1468"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2425,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions\/2425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}