Reviews and Renditions

You may have noticed I don’t post a lot of reviews of my work on my site.

It’s generally considered good business sense to link positive reviews; though, to be perfectly honest, I’m of the opinion that my work is best experienced first-hand because I’ve had plenty of trouble explaining them (maybe I should run a contest on best way to summarize The Aeons’ Gate?)  And, indeed, I love giving people who love my work recognition.  I also enjoy linking critical reviews, even if they are a little negative, because I enjoy taking something from them and I like giving credit to people who go out of their way to be thought-provoking.

But I don’t go looking for them.

That’s not to say I’m particularly displeased to find them.  And in fact, if people email them to me, twitter me about them, put them on my facebook, whatever, I generally put them up or bring them to other peoples’ attention, even if they’re negative.

But the days of me googling my own name and desperately scanning the lines of text like purple and blue bruises against the bloated pale flesh of a corpse long cold are far gone.

And that’s because, when I first started out, I was not at all prepared for anything even remotely like what I found.

I’m not sure anyone is when they first get published, in fact.  But I wonder just how much my journey echoed everyone else who came before me.  I would google myself obsessively, updating it frequently, picking the lines apart like a carrion bird desperately trying to find the last scrap of meat on a long-dead beast.  Every negative review I received (and there were plenty) would rip me apart, sending me moping for days and quietly harboring wishes of vengeance against those who spoke ill of me.  Every middling review I thought was evidence of my mediocrity, true proof that I was the dullest, most bland person alive and I would die alone in obscurity.  Strangely enough, every positive review I got made me happy for, like, twenty minutes and then I was back to being miserable.

I leaned pretty hard on Joe Abercrombie, Brent Weeks and a lot of other authors back in those days.  They had been through it themselves and it really helped to have people like them around to walk me through the emotional highs and lows.

Because, truth be told, that’s kind of part and parcel of being a published author.  When you’re in the public eye, someone’s going to hate you for being there.  When you put something creative out there, someone’s going to take issue with it and point out its flaws.  And when you’re at all artistic, you probably get way, way too much pleasure out of treating every single setback and issue as the end of the world.

In a lot of ways, authors go out of their way to make themselves miserable.  Some of us find a lot of strength in adversity (even if we’re whining and crying about it).  Some of us just need the emotional outlet of being able to pour all of our hate and frustration into a bad review.  Some of us benefit from the input, even when its aim is to harm rather than help.

Regardless, most authors come out of the gauntlet better for it.  Maybe thicker-skinned, maybe better able to see what criticism is helpful, whatever.  Negative reviews shape an author, like positive reviews, and the author is generally better equipped for having done it.

And I’m kind of wondering if that agonizing, endless hell of negative reviews isn’t just beneficial, but necessary.

You probably knew from the moment I mentioned reviews that we were going to talk about The Stop Goodreads Bullying controversy.  I’m linking John Scalzi’s blog there because he has the most thorough collection of responses yet and a quick look through his post will tell you what’s what.  But basically, a group of well-intentioned readers on Goodreads is out to stop what they perceive as harassment and bullying of authors via negative reviews by outing people who give them such reviews.

I’m generally inclined to believe the good in people.  As such, I’m generally inclined to believe the people who are trying to “out” negative reviewers are driven more by a desire to help than harm.  I won’t go any further into speculation than that.

I will, however, say that this sort of thing needs to stop.  People need to be able to say what they think about a book.  Not just because you can’t apply censorship selectively without it resulting in a huge intellectual crime, not just because a belligerent stance toward negative reviews will eventually silence all reviewers for fear of being outed and not just because silencing conversation about a book is ultimately harmful to a book’s publicity.

But authors themselves need that kind of negative attention now and again.

Authors need to be given the opportunity to look at a bad review and develop a thicker skin.  They need to be able to look at a negative review and learn what they can ignore and what they can use.  They need to be able to look at criticism and decide if they can use it or not.  They need to be able to look at the outright hatefulness that some reviewers are capable of and be able to dismiss it for the tripe that it is.  And most importantly, they need to realize how to act toward a negative review, lest their inevitable public meltdown be plastered all across the internet for everyone to see.

It’s true, authors will often feel terrible after reading the reviews.  But they need that opportunity to learn how to pick themselves back up and keep going.

It’s true, authors will occasionally find a review that’s unjustly hurtful or aggressive.  But they need that opportunity to learn to recognize the difference between a hater and a critic.

And it’s true, I, too, went through it all.  In my darker days, I would have wished for a movement like this, someone to finally take it to those big, cruel reviewers who dared to speak their minds about my book.  Hell, there are still some truly unfair reviews of Tome out there that probably deserved to be called out on it.

It’s kind of ironic, really, that I don’t go looking for reviews of my work now that I’ve developed skin thick enough to tolerate most criticism.  And it’s also kind of a shame.  There’s a blogger out there who straight-up called me out on a lot of the more tactless humor in Tome of the Undergates revolving around violence against women; and she was right to do so and I wish I could remember how I saw her review, because she really deserves credit for it.

That’s just one of the ways I benefited from a negative review.  I’ve also learned how to recognize juvenile hate from a worthy point that would strengthen my writing.  I’ve also learned that any discussion about a book tends to ultimately help book sales.  And I’ve learned that there is no cooler feeling in the world than seeing someone say “this book sucks” and seeing a dozen people step up and say “you’re flat out wrong, buddy.”

And I love it when people do that.  Don’t get me wrong, that’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever had happen to me and if you feel like disagreeing with someone who hated a book you love, then by all means, do so!  But realize that, just as you’re doing the author a favor, so too might the negative review.

Love thy neighbor as you love thy books: obsessively.