Saturday, August 30, 2014

Bad Reviews and What to do With Them

I got another one for you: Bad Reviews. Many authors get upset if they receive a bad review. They take it personally. Well, okay, your book is your baby, so it's kind of hard not to take it personally. But that bad review isn't meant to hurt your feelings; it's just an honest remark. That bad review, in fact, is an opportunity. An opportunity, you ask? Well, yes, that's correct. It's an opportunity for you as an author to think about what you might be doing wrong in your writing and how you, as an author, can improve.

After all, don't you want to be the best author you can be? Just because someone gives you a bad review doesn't mean you should unleash the hounds. Stop and think about how you can perfect your writing. Believe it or not, you may not be a Tolstoy or a Hemingway, no matter how often your grandmother tells you you're the next lyrical genius.

Take your bad review (which, btw, is based on one person's opinion) and learn from it. Do yourself and your writing a favor and figure out how you can fix your writing style. After all, writing isn't easy--there are a lot of aspects to it and perhaps you may need some lessons in learning how to make those aspects congeal into a great story.

Getting angry and vindictive over a bad review does nothing to help improve your writing (I knew of an author who wanted to return the favor, but in all fairness, this particular author's writing is, well...I'm not gonna say. What I will say is this: She probably deserved that poor review), and in fact, if you kick the dog over that bad review instead of working on your writing, you may have another bad review waiting right around the corner.

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