A Real World Example Of How Not To Respond To Literary Criticism

Or "Why it isn't in your best interest to go completely insane on the internet."

Here is a link to a review of a particular novel, and in the comments, you will witness the author of the novel completely self destruct over a reviewer that didn't say her book was all dancing pandas and unicorn rainbow farts.

So, what is today's lesson, kids?

You're going to get criticism in life. You're especially going to get criticism if you happen to put work out for public consumption. The reality is, not every single person is going to think your hard work is Mayan gold and magical Skittles. Every single author or director or musician or bearded woman has received negative reviews. Many of them have got the negative reviews early in their career (and later as well), but that didn't cause them to quit or self implode. Instead, they took those reviews and still continued to churn out work, and they still went on to be really successful despite someone not liking their stuff. One bad review does not mean the end of your career, or even the end of sales for that particular book.

The problem isn't getting the negative reviews, but rather how you handle those negative reviews. The way you handle it, is with a smile and you then take from it what you think may help you improve and then you go back to work. Yes, sometimes you may disagree or think the negative review is wrong, but your best strategy is then realize that was one person's opinion and you hopefully have thousand upon thousands that disagree with it (so, you'll still have your beloved sales).

What you don't do, is have a complete meltdown and make yourself appear to be a completely unprofessional asshat. If you want to cry and scream in private then go ahead, but please try to remain a civil human being in public.

The big problem in this case, is that the review actually wasn't that harsh, Yes, he criticized her for grammar and sentence structure, but he did say the story was very engaging. He just felt the prose wasn't as polished as it should be for publication. The fact is, that is the sort of risk you take when you go into self publishing and don't have an editor to help you with your debut effort. The critic definitely did not personally attack the author or declare no one should purchase the book. As negative reviews go, this was probably a pretty favourable one, and definitely not one that should have caused the great human meltdown of March 2011.

Check out the link and take it as a clear example of what not to do when you read a critical review of your hard earned work.