Dear New Novelist: About That Bad Review...

It's a difficult pill to swallow, but when you're done with your short story, your novel, your poem, anything, and you get it out in front of the world, not everyone is going to love it. Go take a look at your favorite book on Amazon or Goodreads. It's got 2 and 1-star reviews. My own husband can't stand Harry Potter (I married a hater? I know, right? But he introduced me to Terry Pratchett, so I can get past it.) There is no single book or story that's universally loved, and there never will be. Some people won't like the genre, others will hate the writing style or plot, and some will just be around to troll because they think it's fun to rile up fans. Inevitably, when you put your hard work out for public consumption, the day will come where you'll get... a bad review.

It's going to stab you in the heart, and how that makes you feel depends on you.

Maybe you'll feel like a failure, even if you have a hundred other reviews that are 4 and 5 stars. You'll pour yourself a glass of liquid comfort (wine, hot chocolate, one of those huge-ass milkshakes that's got a whole slice of cake on it), have a cry, and enjoy a good pity party.

Maybe you'll get mad. How dare they? Haven't they ever heard "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all?" How could they have never watched Bambi?

Or maybe you'll laugh it off, shrug, and go about your day. But no matter what you do, the words will still be there, circling around in your head, popping up unbidden like a Jack-in-the-Box and slowly eating away at you. 

You'll go back and read it again, and you'll notice something. Maybe they misunderstood what you meant in a scene they say they hated. Maybe they're talking about something that never happened, like they reviewed the wrong book. Maybe they're mad they bought the wrong book entirely. Whatever the reason, you'll read it through, and then, when you're done, your eyes will linger on the little option below it.

Reply.

Brake brake BRAKE. Slam those pedals to the ground and pray to God you're not hitting the accelerator, because this is where you need to STOP. 

It's time to talk about the Author's Big Mistake. That is, replying to comments. 

How are you supposed to handle bad reviews? Well, you've got three options:

1) Ignore it. After all, a handful of bad reviews don't cancel out the good ones. One person saying, "I didn't like it" is one person's opinion. Eventually, it'll be just one review among many, and if it's factually wrong or trolling, it'll probably be downvoted by other reviewers.

2) Kill them with politeness. "Thank you for commenting! I appreciate your honesty and will take your thoughts into consideration in the future." It at least makes you look like the bigger person, but it also opens you to conversation with them, which can lead to #3.

3) Try to argue your perspective. Or just argue. After all, writing is your business. Bad reviews will cost you sales, right? Probably. So it only makes sense to respond and tell them "No, see, here's where you're wrong. Please correct your review." Right?

Note: I'm being sarcastic. Have you ever seen what happens when a business responds to a bad review with negativity? It ain't pretty. And this applies to authors too. When a person leaves a bad review, if the recipient ignores it, then its just one review among reviews. Some people will read a bad review and not buy it. Others will read the same review and be convinced they need to try it themselves. In the end, it'll probably balance out.

But when the recipient responds with criticism of the reviewer, it gets out. The reviewer mentions it on their blog or posts about it on Facebook or on a forum, and then it's like a high school fight: everyone's gotta see it and get in. Then the reviewed has to defend themselves from the flood of negativity and voices going "Dude, stop" because they're wrong too, right? You have to save your business! Everyone has to see that you're not the bad guy! And then you're too far gone.

Even if you manage to avoid the flood of negative PR from responding defensively, you've still put evidence out there that you have thin skin, or that if someone doesn't like your work, they'll get spoken down to or yelled at. Your own bad behavior will cost you more sales, reads, or reviews than any negative review ever could.

So stop and look at that reply button. Sip your wine, tea, hot chocolate, or crazy-ass milkshake. If you absolutely must write a response, write it in a separate document, not the reply box. And then, when you're done, delete it.

Because no bad review could ever do as much damage to your career as you can do yourself with a reply.

Dear New Novelist: The Paycheck Isn't Always Worth It

Dear New Novelist,

Getting paid to write sounds amazing, doesn't it? That's a lot of our goals. Whether it's enough to live and work full-time as a writer or just enough to buy a pizza and maybe a celebratory milkshake, the fact is that we want to get paid to do something we love. So if someone came to you with an offer to write for them, for pay, why would you ever say no?

I got an email this morning. Right to my inbox. In summation, it said, "Write a blog post for us, and we'll pay you."

I should be excited! I've never been paid to write.

And I will continue to not be. Because while the idea of money for words is lovely, sometimes the cost isn't worth it.

To expand on that email's summation, the sender is a foreign wedding and prom dress website. They want me to write them a blog post, in German, advertising them, and if I make the post, share their banner, and advertise the blog post on all my social medias, they'll pay me $30.

I could be living out of a paper bag and I still would not take that offer. Because, new novelist, pay is not always worth it.

It's not worth surrendering your integrity or going against what you stand for if they want to pay you to write something you would normally never say yourself but must portray it as your own thoughts.

It's not worth loss of reputation and dependability if they want to pay you to become a walking spam advertisement.

It's DEFINITELY not worth the risk of malware to your readers or you.

Honestly,  not worth learning another language either, in this case. I know, like, three phrases in German: Ich bin ein Berliner, schmetterling, and schadenfreude. And you know, some random stuff about Heil and Fuhrers and a few insults I picked up in The Book Thief.

I am not even going to trouble myself with writing them a response, unless they're actually reading this blog, in which case, my answer is "No." No, I will not be your shill. No, I will not destroy my reputation across all my social media platforms for you. No, I will not waste my time with you more than sharing a few laughs with my friends at your audacity.

But thanks for the inspiration for the blog post.

Dear New Novelist: No One's Going to Steal Your WIP

Dear New Novelist,

Congratulations! You've hit your 50k on NaNoWriMo, or maybe you've put THE END on your novel. Either way, you've got a lot of words. You've worked hard on them, through easy bursts and head-bangingly difficult blocks. They're all yours. Now what? Well, you have a few options: if you're doing NaNoWriMo or Camp, it's time to validate; you can send it to some beta readers; or if you've done your editing already, time to submit it to publishers or agents.

"But wait!" you say, clutching your novel to your chest. "How can I possibly do that? What if someone tries to steal it?!"

Dear New Novelist, no one is going to steal your unedited, unpublished work.

Every year during NaNo, numerous newbies panic over validation or using the official word counter. "Who's doing the counting? Where is my novel stored so that it can be counted? What's stopping anyone from stealing my hard work?"

Answers: Absolutely no one, absolutely no where, and so many reasons.

The counting is done by a word counter not unlike your own word processing program's. It doesn't need to save anything anywhere. It just counts the words and dumps it, as if it never existed. Imagine if it saved a copy of every novel submitted every year. In 2015, there were 40,423 winners of NaNoWriMo according to WikiWriMo. Since 2010, there have been 254,342 winning novels. The site slows down enough on November 30th just trying to count everyone's requests without storage. If it were trying to pop it into a server somewhere and save it, the whole site would likely be rendered nonfunctional.

And not a single one of those novels was edited when it was submitted for validation. That's 254,000 messy chunks of coal with the potential to become diamonds, mixed in with people who submitted Lorem Ipsum because they handwrote their novels or used a typewriter, or people who scrambled their text out of the concerns listed above. Even if they saved a copy of everyone's novel, if someone at the NaNoWriMo Office wanted to steal your validated work for publication, they would have to read completely through every single submission to find the ones that are not fanfiction, that are complete (because 50k doesn't mean done), and that aren't filled with "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" 5000 times. Then, once they've isolated those that qualify, they'd have to edit it, because who has time for a deep cleaning edit during NaNo?

Plagiarists steal because they don't want to do the work, and editing is, to most writers, the least fun work of all in writing. What plagiarists would rather do, what they do, in fact, do, is take someone's published work and change a few words to pass it off as their own.

This is the same reason a beta reader isn't going to steal your novel, or an editor or agent. Because most likely, they all need work that a plagiarist is not going to want to do. Even if they did, there's no guarantee whatever the end result is will sell. Working with something already published, they know it's something that someone will buy.

Now, this isn't a reason not to thoroughly vet your beta readers, agents, editors, and publishers. Do your homework. For beta readers, use people you trust, not just the first stranger who offers. For editors, publishers, and agents, get reviews from other people, check Absolute Write's Bewares, Recommendations, and Background Check forum and scour the internet for them. Be sure you're not sending your novel off to a vanity publisher who will publish your unedited book for thousands of dollars, or to an agent that will "absolutely get you published but first you have to pay this editor who just happens to be [their] husband." There are lots of scams and scary things to be concerned about out there in the publishing world. Someone stealing your incomplete or unedited novel shouldn't even be in the top 10.