Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

There’s a lot of chatter on the blogs about bad reviews and what to do about them (like The Misfortune of Wondering). Bad reviews are a fact of writing life; they cannot be avoided. You’ll get them from critics, from readers, from family and friends, and at times, from fellow writers (those are the worst). But no matter the source, there is only one acceptable response.

What is that acceptable response? Well, it isn’t is to fire off a flaming bitch-fest where you call the reviewer an illiterate berk and question his paternity. Despite the immediate satisfaction this activity provides, it is definitely not the way to go. If you must, write it and then delete it.

However, neither is it acceptable to write a reasonable, point-by-point rebuttal to the critique, noting how this scene is obviously an allusion to Homer’s “The Odyssey,” depicting the character’s inner journey, and how your hero’s deformed limb is a device to mirror Richard III, which should be clear to anyone with an education. These refutations always come across as whiny and insecure (yes, pompous can and often does come across as insecurity).

In short, a response is never acceptable, because (a) you never convince the reviewer you’re right, and (b) because you (the writer) never appear in a good light. A response always makes the writer look silly, pedantic, immature, petulant, patronizing, or just plain stupid. There are as many reasons for a bad review as there are bad reviews. Some people just don’t like the sort of stuff you write. Some may like the genre, but just didn’t like the book. Some nitpickingly comb through any book and tag the writer for any flaw, real or imagined. Some reviewers, including a few professional ones, are bitter, small-minded people for whom tearing down someone else’s work is a way to make them feel better about themselves. And then there are some reviewers who have read the book, considered it with a well-educated mind, and simply found it to be flawed.

No book is perfect. No book will please every reader. No book is immune from the bad review. Just go out on Amazon; even the critically-acclaimed and best-selling titles have bad reviews. I’ve had bad reviews a-plenty. One reviewer panned my entire novel because of one perceived factual error (it wasn’t an error). Another reviewer panned me because he didn’t like the historical Custer, and didn’t want to read a novel with him as a character (this is substantive?) I’ve had bad reviews of every stripe, and responding to these bad reviews is futile, useless, and possibly career-damaging.

The only acceptable response is to read them and consider them. Just like you would consider the feedback from a fellow writer or a writers’ workshop, consider the feedback from a bad review. In both cases, the feedback may be meaningful; the reviewer may have touched upon a flaw you hadn’t seen before. If the feedback is valuable, use it; if not, dump it.

Here’s the crux: if someone doesn’t “get” something you wrote, if someone doesn’t understand that character’s motivation or what that scene really meant, then you screwed up, not the reader. The book is perfect in your head, but it’s never perfect on the page.

k