Bad Reviews

I'm included in a lot of writing facebook groups, and I spend a lot of time flicking around through the posts. I like to see writers making progress and finally believing in themselves. But the one thing I have to see a lot of is people being so disheartened to the point of quitting writing because of a bad review.

The fact that you got a review is a huge step towards what you wanted in the first place. The job now is to decipher the review, seeing the good instead of the bad. Think of your favourite writers, and search their books, they will have a bad review too. It's just part and parcel of getting into the writing world. Not everyone will be on your wavelength. It isn't the end of the world, take the good with the bad. People have a habit of disliking something before they have given it a chance. So if they say something like 'I had to put it down after a page and a half' ignore it, they didn't give the book a chance to stand up for itself.

My favourite author at the moment is Morgan Rhodes, the book I have been reading is Falling Kingdoms, I absolutly fell in love with this book, so much that I couldnt go on for a few days when I thought my favourite character was about to die. I plucked up the courage to read the last twenty pages and by god am I glad I did. But anyway, I have just flicked on Amazon and seen Falling Kingdoms has three one-star reviews. I read them and truthfully got a little bit angry because they were harsh and I loved it so much. My point being is that all great, amazing writers will get bad reviews because not everyone will like their work. It is the same with your own, there will be people who might not like the plot because of one reason or another, they might dislike the characters, they might not like the pace.

Reading bad reviews is a great insight to what you might be faced with, I haven't received a bad review yet, or a good one either, but if you prepare yourself for something bad it might not hurt as much.

I am not saying this because I expect every writer to get a bad review, I don't. I honestly hope that readers see past what they didn't like and try to put it to us in a constructive way that allows us to learn from something they didn't like. Take the review into consideration, if you don't agree with it, then dismiss it, don't even acknowledge it, if that makes you feel better. But perhaps it helps, maybe it just points you in a direction you didn't think of, or you missed.

If something good comes of something bad, then you haven’t you already won?

Think about it and come back to me. I would like to hear what you think too.

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