Dealing With Bad Reviews

It was bound to happen at some point. Getting on for four years of publishing stories, novels, blogs, poetry, articles, newsletters... Pretty much anything and everything that can be published (and getting paid for it too, which is always a nice bonus), a bad review was sure to come along eventually. In all honesty, I think I'm lucky that it took this long, and that it's only happened on one published work (ironically, the one that is selling best in paperback form... Well, there you go!). I came across the review by accident when I was searching for an Amazon link, and, I'll admit, it did take me a few moments to realise what I was reading.

It's not that I'm a complete egotist, it's just that I wasn't prepared for it.

My initial reaction was to comment on the review, to point out exactly where the reviewer had gone wrong, to correct spelling and grammar, to basically, very passive-aggressively, get a little of my own back. In essence, I wanted to review their review.

I didn't do it. Oh, in my head I commented a thousand times, ripping the reviewer apart for tearing into a project that I - and a small group of friends - had put together as a little bit of fun between us, but in reality I ignored it completely. Was it hard? Yes, it bloody well was. My book, something the group and I had slaved over and enjoyed working on, had been mauled, and I wanted revenge.

I guess it's a natural human reaction.

When backed into a corner, when hurt (literally or figuratively), the first response is to fight back. It's evident all over nature. But, just as in the wilds of Africa or the Amazon rainforest or the Jeremy Kyle show, or any other place you care to name, it is far too easy for the whole situation to escalate until you find yourself in a snarling, brawling, biting, name calling never-ending loop of pain and misery.

So my advice to you, whether it's a one star review on Amazon, or a bad report, or petty squabbling between so-called friends, is to ignore it. Take a deep breath. Hold your head up high. Walk away. Because the review is one of three things:

1. It's an attempt at trolling. Basically, it's a deliberate and mean spirited way for the reviewer to have some 'fun' at the writer's (or worker's etc) expense. And that's just not worth getting into - as they say, don't feed the trolls. Check out the reviewer's other reviews; are they all one star? Is he or she mindlessly cruel in general, or was it just you? This will give you an idea as to whether the review is worth anything or not.

2. It's a review left by someone who had a grudge against you. It has been known for other authors to rubbish their 'competition' by leaving one star reviews. It's petty and close minded, but they wouldn't do it if their work was any good, and if they didn't feel threatened by yours. It's almost - almost, but not quite... - a compliment. These kinds of people just don't have it in them to understand that they would be better off joining in and helping their fellow writer. It makes for a much happier existence, and much better book sales!

3. The review is correct. Hard as it may be to swallow, sometimes people don't like what you create. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it leaves you with an empty feeling. Yes, it is a truly horrible thing. But no one is perfect, and everyone is different. Those seemingly trite phrases are absolutely accurate in this situation. You may not have got it right, in which case a reviewer is perfectly justified in saying so. Even if you have dozens of five star reviews, that doesn't mean that everyone is going to adore your work. Just let it go; have you loved everything you've ever read?

Whichever one of the three the poor review your work has been given falls under, the best course of action is to ignore it. Time will move on, you'll write more, you'll publish more, you'll receive more reviews and one day, hopefully sooner rather than later, that one star won't mean anything anymore.

The key, is to just keep swimming...

Thank St Anthony

Blame, blame, blame. Nag, nag, nag. That’s all Margaret heard, all she felt. It was, for the most part, all she knew. For years now she had craved a different kind of attention from her mother. Instead of recriminations and impatience, she wanted warmth, joy, love. Above all, she wanted to make her mother proud.

That was her ultimate goal, her main aim. It was an obsession, a compulsion, a need in her. Not because she particularly wanted her mother’s approval. It was too late for that now, too much water had spewed mercilessly under the rickety old bridge that she stood on to watch her life pass by. No, the reason was one of satisfaction for her; it would be a job completed that had been started decades ago.

And now, at almost forty, Margaret thought it was about time she got on with it. This year she would succeed.

Living with her mother made it both much easier and much harder to come up with schemed and plans and plots to get that small smile, that nod of the head, that hug. Easier because Margaret could pounce on the least little thing and make it into something that would help her get what she wanted. Harder because each time the idea failed, she had to live with the jibes and snide comments that went with it.

Nonetheless, she kept trying.

Cleaning the house. That, she had thought, would please her mother. Top to bottom every Saturday, and a run round with the Hoover on Tuesdays and Thursdays to keep it fresh. And all this before work. Or after it if she got up late. Or sometimes pushed to the next day if it had to be, if the car wouldn’t start or she got held up. But whatever and whenever, it was done. Eventually.

But apparently it was not done well enough.

“Look at this dust, Margaret. You’ve missed this whole shelf, Margaret. Did you use the blue cloth for the toilet, Margaret?”

“Sorry, Mum.”

It was always, “Sorry, Mum.”

Even when she wasn’t.

These days, most of the time, she wasn’t. She was usually already thinking of the next thing she could do to make her mother proud as the words came automatically from her mouth.

After the cleaning idea came the driving. She became a taxi service, when she wasn’t at work, anyway. Each evening it was bingo or the pub or the book club. Every evening there was something. Her mother was a busy woman, very sociable and very keen on late finishes, whether it be a friend’s birthday party or a trip to the theatre. It was all so tiring for Margaret, who enjoyed being at home early, tucked up and snuggled in, warm and comfy cosy. It was time consuming. It was not, she felt, appreciated.

“You’re driving too fast, Margaret. You’ve missed the turning, Margaret. You’re going to hit that car, Margaret.”

Margaret was within the speed limit, she knew a shortcut, and she was nowhere near the car in front of her.

But still; “Sorry, Mum.”

“I’ll drive myself from now on. I don’t know why you insisted on doing it for me anyway. I’m perfectly capable.”

“Sorry, Mum.”

Margaret did, sometimes, wonder why she was so bothered. She wondered why she stayed. After all, she could quite easily afford it.

Of course, Margaret’s pride was at stake. That was the reason. And she promised herself that once she had made her mother love her, or like her, or at least be mildly pleased with her, she would leave.

It was serve the old bag right anyway.

Why couldn’t she break through? Even as a child it had been the same. Marks in school had been too low (even when they had been the highest in the class). Her friends had been too common. Her uniform always looked a mess.

When she got a little older, her boyfriends had all been rude, ungrateful, potential thieves and mass murderers. Or they may as well have been, according to her mother.

So eventually, Margaret gave up on having one.

It was easier that way. Much, much easier.

And the easy route was always the best one, wasn’t it? Which was probably why she had never said anything to her mother about the problem. It was just easier not to. Margaret supposed the habit of criticising had just stuck, and now her mother didn’t know how to stop it.     

Margaret didn’t know either. Which was a problem.

And she was close to running out of ideas that would – or could – make her mother proud.

She had been awarded a first class honours degree in English. Her mother asked her why she hadn’t done any of the sciences.

“Sorry, Mum.”

She had already changed her job. Twice. To no avail. She had loved nursing, but her mother mentioned that she might be better off teaching. And when she had settled in at the new school, her mother had suggested that all the best jobs were to be found in banking.

Margaret sat at the dining table, sighing loudly, Open University brochures sprawled out in front of her, reams of job applications to this school or that hospital piled up to her side.

She was making a decision.

It was time.

Mother be damned.

Margaret could her hear mother complaining on the phone to a long-suffering and terminally patient friend. “I’ve lost my glasses again, Henrietta. Lost them completely. I only had them a moment ago and now I’ve no idea where I put them.”

Mother may not have known, but Margaret did.

And Margaret had an idea. She got up from the table and rushed away to the other end of the house, to the kitchen, where she had seen her mother’s glasses earlier that day. She would retrieve them, and all would be well. So off she went.

 She was soon busy searching for the glasses that she knew – just knew – had been left in the kitchen. And there they were, wedged up against the bread bin, squeezed in next to the toaster.

Margaret plucked them out and held them up, triumphant. She smiled to herself, forgetting all about the plans she had been making to live her own life. No, these glasses were the key to everything.

And then there would be no more excuses.

No more reasons to stay behind.

No more reasons to not do what she wanted, to have to stay where she was.

Where it was comfortable. Where it was easy.

Where it was safe.

Margaret slowly put the glasses down on the counter, where they could easily be seen. Where they could easily be found.

She shuffled back to the dining room and sat again, pretending to look through brochures that she would never really read.

Her mother’s voice drifted in through the open door and the words settled on Margaret, heavy and damning.

“And I’m worried about my glasses. I wonder if Margaret knows where they are?”

Sorry, Mum, Margaret thought. You’re just going to have to thank St Anthony when you find them. It’s nothing to do with me.

She gathered the shiny prospectuses and crisp forms together and wondered whether they would all fit in the bin.   

Write What You Know?

That old piece of advice, “write what you know”, has been tried and tested for decades, reminding writers that they ought to only write about what they have personally experienced, and what they truly understand.
Or at least that is how it has been read.

Personally, however, I don’t believe writers need to write about what they know. Not in the physical, literal sense, that is. After all, if J.K. Rowling had only written what she knew, there would be no Hogwarts. If Tolkien had only written what he knew, there would be no Hobbits. Imagine a world with no Oz, no Wonderland, no mysteries, no fantasies.

Every book written would be full of the mundane and, ultimately, the boring. Books are an escape from real life, not a reflection of it. Therefore, “write what you know” does not and should not apply to the actions of characters, or even the places in which they find themselves.

Research is wonderful for finding out about places and things that you want to write about, and it’s certainly not necessary to have experienced everything that happens in your book – not necessary and not possible. That’s the beauty of writing; it is fiction, and anything can happen.

The rest is down to imagination. And why not? Why not pretend? Create it, and the readers will see it in their minds. As long as there is a little something of yourself within the work, nothing else matters.
 
For me, writing what I know means putting my own emotions, thoughts, and feelings into my work. I add little snippets of information that only those incredibly close to me will understand, and perhaps not even then. But it’s not for anyone else, it’s for me, to keep me on the right track, to ground my ideas in some form of reality. This reality, however, is the one I have created for my writing, not the one in which I sit and write.

Poem - I Am A Liar

I Am A Liar 

I am a liar,

I eat too much,

I gossip,

I always smile,

I never cry.

I am a liar,

I don’t eat enough,

I can’t talk,

I never smile,

I sometimes cry,

And I never, ever lie.

©Lisamarie Lamb 2013 

The Best Writing Places and Spaces

I write at home, in my study (spare box room). This is new to me, as for the past five years, I wrote in the back bedroom, amongst my books, with a view out into the back garden, and out over the fences to the world beyond. It was often fairly distracting, that view, and it's not even a particularly nice one. Still, I was used to it, and was comfortable there. I wrote around 1.5 million words from that room, from my corner desk with the nice/nasty view.

Then everything changed. My daughter turned three. And with that came the move - she had been in the nursery (spare box room) since she was born, but now that she definitely need a big girl's bed, and there was certainly no space for it in the smaller room, we needed to change things around. So she got the old back bedroom, and I got the small front one.

I'll admit, I was worried. I often have a hard time writing in unfamiliar places and spaces. I know other writers who really don't have a problem with it - they get their laptop or notepad out wherever and whenever they are able to, and jot down a few thousand words. But I'm not great at that. I like to be comfortable and settled before I can zone out into my writing world.

I felt slightly better in the fact that I am able to write many thousands of words when I go on my annual writing retreat at Retreats for You in Devon. That was a different room, with a different view, and I got on fabulously there, so perhaps... Perhaps this move wouldn't be so difficult after all.

But still I worried. What if I did lose my spark? What if it was all down to that desk in that place in that room? Was that where the magic came from? Was I just being completely ridiculous?

The day came, and we swapped rooms. Tired, aching from moving furniture, I had to get everything set up exactly as I liked it, even if the angles were different, and the walls were yellow instead of magnolia and the view was of the house opposite and not of the garden. I had a deadline to meet.

And I met it. And the next one. And the next one too, and I was writing fiction, and articles and blog posts (for other people, sorry Moonlit Door!). I wasn't just writing like before - I was writing more than before! Whatever had happened, whether this new room was where the magic really was, whether the new view was less distracting, or whether I had mentally made myself get on with it and get creative, it was working.

I decided it was time to branch out. I've often heard that other writers like to visit coffee shops or cafes, to spend a little time with themselves and their work with no distractions. So yesterday I tried that. I went to Barton's Point Coastal Park, which is a beautiful spot about 10 minutes down the road from my house. The cafe there overlooks a gorgeous lake with swans that glide across it, and people doing water sports. There is a crackling fire, continuous coffee, and simply delicious food. I was there for the day - six hours in total.

Did I manage to write anything? Well, that chapter 8 of the spy novel I'm writing has been bugging me for a while. It's a tricky one, in which the hero discovers a huge secret about his father, and that in turn sets him off on the main adventure of the book.

I'd been putting it off for a while.

But by the end of my time at Barton's Point, it was finished. Not only that, but I had hand written the whole lot, in an old notebook. I hadn't taken my laptop as I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to plug it in or not (and the battery isn't great). I'm fairly slow at handwriting, so I was even more pleased with the result because of that! Plus, as an added little bonus, a plot point that had been niggling away at me finally resolved itself. I'm wondering now whether this book has the potential be actually be pretty good. I'll certainly head back to Barton's Point very soon to see what else I can create while I'm there!

Fairy Lights - Coming Soon from J. Ellington Ashton Press

O

Not long now!

On a whim, I decided to put all of my short stories together to make a collection. I've already self published one set of stories (Some Body's At The Door), and had another published by Dark Hall Press (Over The Bridge), and I thought that these new stories (around 50,000 words' worth) were interesting, creepy, and a little bit different.

There are interior monologues and streams of consciousness. There are real frights, and fiendishly amusing delights. There are tales of children going where they shouldn't, and adults behaving badly. It's not just the humans who get it wrong either - there are ghosts, ghouls, monsters, and some things that can't be named.

I sent the collection, entitled Fairy Lights after one of the longer stories included, to J. Ellington Ashton Press. Many of my online friends and associates from the horror community had good things to say about this new and exciting press, and I felt that my stories would be a good fit.

They were!

Catt Dahman of J. Ellington Ashton Press contacted me to offer me a contract, and of course, very excitedly and with a faint air of light headedness, I accepted. Fairy Lights was on its way to being published.

The cover, as you can see above, is complete, thanks to the incredible Susan Simone who used her artistic talents to create something suitable scary. I love it. I hope you do too.

Edits are currently underway, and the plan is to release the book on Hallowe'en (of course!).

Since there is still a little way away, here is a teaser from a story called Little Witch:

Would she rather burn or drown?

It was the kind of question that kept Jasmine Bird awake at night, keeping her from dreaming the sweet, pink dreams of childhood. It was the kind of question that she only asked out loud once because all it would earn her were sideways glances and gasps, never an answer.

 It was also the kind of question that intrigued her and interested her and made her wonder. The witches had to answer it when they were accused. They had to make that terrible decision. How could they? One decision left them struggling under the water, writhing and twisting as their lungs burst and the weight of the life-taking liquid pressed down and down and down on them, crushing them to death. The other had them tied to a stake so tightly that their fingers stung and their fingernails dropped away, dripping into the flames that quickly, caught hold of flesh and blood and hair and ate them up, piece by piece. The heat and smoke of their own skin cooked and blinded them.

Jasmine shuddered delightedly when she thought of it. Not of the pain, not of the indignity even, but of the surprise that the murderers – because that was what they were, not judges, not juries – would have when the charred or sodden bodies came back to life and haunted them forever. It only served them right, after all. Who would have thought a good little girl like Jasmine could think of such terrible wickedness? 

Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?

Where do you get your ideas from?

It’s that question. The one that writers detest and interviewers love.

But why do we dislike answering that one so much? Or do we? Perhaps, now, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; we’re told that we should hate it, that’s it’s anathema to our creativity. And therefore, when we hear it, we do hate it, it does feel like giving away too much. Even if we have an interesting response. Even if we’re quite sure that our readers would like to know the answer.

I don’t mind it. If I’m honest, I quite like it. As a question it’s much better than being asked why I started writing (umm… I just did… I just gave it a go and quite liked it… er… something about school and an English project…) or why I write horror (I enjoy reading it, I enjoy writing it) because I never have proper answers for those ones. I always feel a bit of a fraud, a bit like I’m grasping for something – anything – to say just to sound interesting and intellectual.

At least with that question I can answer with either a piece of pure fabrication, or complete honesty. It simply depends on whether I can remember where the idea came from, and if I can whether it was an interesting occasion. Although, admittedly, even when telling the absolute truth my answer will vary from day to day, story to story to novel to flash fiction to poetry… Because that’s the beauty of it. Ideas come from everywhere and nowhere. They are incredible, intangible things that appear in a dream or a cloud or are gleaned from an overheard word or a misunderstood laugh. They are magical, existing in nothing, invisible and incomplete until they are written down and given form and meaning. 

If I were asked where I got my idea for my current novel, I might say it was the main character, Jude, who came first. Just popped into my head. Or was it a dream? Did I see him on a train, or walking down the street? Perhaps I based him on someone I know, or someone I’d like to know, or someone I’d never want to know. Or I could say that it was the thought of murders that looked like accidents, and that that idea came from a newspaper, or I looked at a bus and wondered what it would be like… well, you know. It could even have been a song I heard on the radio. Maybe I didn’t quite catch the lyrics and made up my own, and maybe they led me to my first line, which then set the tone for the test of the book.

Say anything. When asked that question, say what you like. Because who is to say what is right and what is wrong when answering, when telling the person who put the question what they want to know?

Equally, who can describe an idea? Not me. They aren’t there, are they? They aren’t real. Except that they are, utterly and incontrovertibly real. Without them we’d be nothing. And not just writers, but scientists, artists, doctors, teachers, lawyers, children, adults, anyone and everyone. Think about it… There, you’ve just had an idea. Just like that.

Now what are you going to do with it?