Tip-toeing

From:

http://www.artistssuitcase.com/5questions/

3. What is the critic’s motive?

You can’t read people’s minds, but most of the time you can discern someone’s motive when they criticize you. Is it constructive criticism tempered with love and concern? Or is it destructive criticism designed to bring you down? The critic’s motive can be a clue to whether or not the criticism is legitimate.

Criticism

I fear criticism. I take even the mildest criticisms very personally and let them hurt and fester way out of proportion to the actual purpose, meaning, or intent.  For instance:  people post book reviews when it is clear they did not read the book.  I don't understand it.  No matter if it is just stars or the reader of the review sees it for what it is, still it takes down my average.  And why do they do that out of a clear blue sky?  Well, I might as well ask why a random stranger drags his car keys through the paint on a random car.  Some thing is just wrong in the head.  And since there are now more people on the world, we see more of these strange people wreaking their hurt because of the way it makes the inside of their head feel. 

I mentioned to someone that I am not a good reviewer.  I don't like to hurt feelings.  That is all I remember hearing in my childhood.  "Her feelings are hurt."  I guess it is good they acknowledged I had them even as they blithely rode roughshod over them. If I promised a review, I will pick out a good thing about the book and emphasize it and give four rather than five stars.  (There should be about ten stars.  I can never make  a choice.)  But on a forum where a person asked for a critique of a preliminary excerpt, I remarked how good they were at telling a story even though I was not the intended audience.  I commented that there were a few minor syntax problems, but I wasn't there for an edit.  The asker went all postal about how they were an English teacher and how I could shove my syntax errors.  Well, the person did not put it exactly that way.  I put a negative review on Amazon for a book about Jesus that was some preposterous metaphysical theory and was a grammar disaster.  I felt so bad about it I went back and took it down.  The person got to say what they wanted to say, and anyone should get a pat on the back for that, much less having the courage to display it to the whole world.

Then there are the times I have asked specific people about specific matters in relation to one of my books.  When they said something was wrong and I objectively pointed to my research backing up my statements they got all hostile and said a couple of insulting things. This was a person who said nothing about imbalances or inconsistencies in my writing or story or method.  Just facts the person homed in on.  I thanked that person for their brilliant ideas and support and quietly rolled up my rug and folded my tent.  The very best thing anyone said about anything I wrote was "crazy good read" and I cannot get over it.  I always feel like I feel a certain way about something but someone doesn't get it.  When I am surprised at the way someone reacts to something --  for example, in the face of disaster a person commented to the person experiencing the disaster that God didn't give you more than you could handle and the person took it negatively and construed that the person was trying to explain to her that God wanted her to have the disaster because otherwise she would not have been able to cope with the outcome.  Like the disasteree had the mind set that the commiseration offerer was saying, "Better the plane crashes carrying the guy you might meet and marry in twenty years cuz you might get a divorce if the plane doesn't crash.  So here, God says, have a plane crash on me." So it is like a very brilliant light in the wilderness that I feel someone read my words and got what I was saying.

I write what a learned person said was "third person omniscient".  Yet I get remarks about my POV changing.  I can just see the person shaking their head over something I wrote and I feel like I wish I could have been there to hold their hand so they could fully enjoy the mastery of my story telling.  Seriously.  Don't think I am kidding.

I get sad.  A person is blogging on all the steps to publication.  The person put up an excerpt of the finished product.  POV changes?  Yeow.  Run on sentences.  Wrong word used for meaning.  Awful. Commas joining two sentences together when the first part needed a question mark.  I couldn't stand it.  And the person will get an editor and publish on Harlequin and buy their daughter an Arabian thoroughbred.  I made sixty dollars last month.

Have you read any of my excerpts?  Not asking you too.  If you were going to, you would have done so by now.  I put "Sex in the Shower", a part of one chapter in one book, a true excerpt.  One person said it was beautiful erotica.  Not.  Nice to hear, but it is just kind of a sexy, light hearted event.  One person said they couldn't enjoy it as anything but a how-to list since I didn't paint my characters deeply enough for her.  (Excerpt)  Another person said they felt sorry for me if I thought that was racy.  (Well, I talked about him elsewhere.)  Sex in the Shower has had more hits than anything I ever posted and that was it for written remarks.  I won't tell you the site I posted it to cuz I love it and they are cracker jack with commenting and always asking for more.

I just don't get it.  And I feel very sad that I know I will never get it, never understand the different ways people see things, because I feel like I should.  But I accept my own argument that it is all about me, and let the twisted little suckers go find their own way. That, as far as I am concerned, the way I see things is right, and I accept that is so, even knowing it may be right ONLY for me and as far as the general population is concerned, I am the twisted little sucker wandering in the wilderness.

I know I am doing something right because one of my older books has a spot in an algorithm somewhere and her activities have huge repercussions.  The other books, tiny repercussions.  So I hold on to the hope that this next one will do it.  I am hopeful about this Smashwords series highlighting thing they just invented, and this entire book, which is EXACTLY like all the others, has been written because I have a great title.  Well, we will see.  I am not on the ropes yet.

So fie on thee that has read not a single Elizabethan historical romance and dares criticize my little sweeties for hopping in the sack with more than one person in their lifetime. I had my day in the sun, and I intend to blind you with that reflection before I die.

Actually, this whole post started out because I had another huge spike in my blog stats and I do not know why.  I so want to know so I can follow through on it, but whatever.  I feel like I am through for the night.
I will generously repost for the day shift, although, I guess for my readers across the sea this is the day shift.

Y'all know how much I love you, right?  Cuz I do.  Thanks for stopping by.  Y'all come on back now, real soon.

Illustration attribution: emoticon from colourbox considered by its use on the web as public access. 

Reason and Reviewing

There has been lots of discussion about Goodreads reviewers.  I followed a long stream of commenting between a reviewer and an author and it was sad.  It was so obvious the reviewer had an agenda to put this author down.  The author could not understand why this review was so unlike most of hers which seemed fair and constructive.  Then I saw a forum in which the reviewers chatted with each other and said stuff about certain authors.  I felt like I was eavesdropping in the ladies room at a dive bar.  I am really scared of them and try to avoid them.  I also try very hard to remember the good things that are said and not concentrate on the negative remarks, especially when the reviewer can offer no concrete reasons for the review.

I just noted this is available even if a reviewer has you blocked or will not friend you so you cannot converse with her or contact her personally.  Looking at it will help your perspective if someone gives you an out of the ordinary, perhaps mean-spirited review or you get one that sounds like they didn't read the book at all.  This is very generalized, but if you click on any reviewers name you will get to it, even if you click on it and the site says you don't have access.  By their name is a link to this.

So you can be consoled by the fact that you are not likely to get a positive review from this one.

I think the whole reviewing process is so odd.  Before the internet, when did a reviewer ever have such power over book sales?  You would read the book section in the newspaper and the blurb on the jacket in the store or the library or hear about a book from someone.  Now it reminds me of sharks.  If they get the scent of blood they all come running over to feed.  Even some very well-respected sites have gone off the deep end in what I thought was attack mode when a certain author came to her own defense regarding an Amazon Review. 

Visit the Amazon forum called Authors Behaving Badly.  It's like watching the lions tearing the Christians apart.  I stumbled on it and made a passing remark and BOOM.  I never comment there anymore.  I believe it is the New York Times that has a book reviewer who is considered iconic because  no matter who or what it is, she will tear the book and the author to shreds. .  

You have to develop your own perspective on this issue if you present your writing to the public and I find that very difficult. In a grouping of several reviews for one of my books, one person used the word evocative in her review.  Another used the word evocative twice in quite a long and very nice review.  I think strumming a familiar chord in someone's heart is the best thing you could expect from your work.  But a "family member" went  in and said that it must be a very evocative book.  Doesn't she know the public can see that and that those two nice people will never review one of my books again?  Yeow. 

Then don't get me started on the pay for reviews.  Kirkus is considered so credible   But you have to pay to get on there.  I can't even get a neighbor or a friend or a relative to even write a real review much less a fake one to boost my ratings.  Very few have even bought it.  And one of them bought ONE and then waited for another to go on freebie.  I think I may have gotten a review out of that one. The sweet little books  cost less than a nice greeting card.  I have even said, "You don't even have to read it, but the sale will help my rank."  But then what the heck.  What were my expectations?  Once again. . . fuck me.

"BORING" and I do quote. . .

In a local library-type amateur critique group we were talking about slow sales and some one said re:  Sacred Sin.  "Don't you think that story's been told enough?  Like Gone With the Wind?"  I mentioned I was well aware it has been told and retold but I was working more in the Arthur-Guinevere vein.  I wonder if anyone told Margaret Mitchell her book was too derivative of the King Arthur Legends?

And a baker (!!!) in England found my sex scene excerpted here, "Sex in the Shower"  (most hits of any post ever) introspective, (Bad?) human, (Bad?) and somewhat boring.  He said he felt a little sad for me if I thought it was racy.  I think he was looking at some of my other book blurbs cuz I didn't use the word "racy" on Algonquin's Table.  He probably didn't find enough references to "shaved pussy" which he mentions a lot in his work,  and which I think sounds a little crude.  And anyway, my heroines can all afford laser treatments for that issue. Well, maybe not Deanie.

Guess I'm having one of those bitter days here. Don't know why. Ben's team won again and last night I felt like I was back in that writing place after a long time.  So on with that boring, introspective, human stuff that's already been told.  And retold. Gonna tell it again!!



Photo attribution:  www.shavingstuff.com (I am not making that up.)