{"id":1516,"date":"2011-10-06T15:32:17","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T14:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=1516"},"modified":"2014-08-02T14:10:03","modified_gmt":"2014-08-02T13:10:03","slug":"reviewing-my-position","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=1516","title":{"rendered":"REVIEWING: MY POSITION"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the new Focus is almost ready to go, I thought I’d put my editorial from issue 56 online (this is a slightly longer version than the one that appeared in the magazine)…<\/em><\/p>\n

I always seek out reviews of the stuff I get published. I know there are people who say they never look at a review, but I don\u2019t really believe them. For me the point of writing is to tell stories to other people. Some people say they write only for themselves, not caring whether they\u2019re read or if their work is liked. But what\u2019s the point of that? If you\u2019re telling stories to yourself, keep them in your head\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0 the special effects are better and you don\u2019t have to worry about the spelling.\u00a0 And how come so many of those people get published? If they\u2018re only writing for themselves, how do the publishers get hold of their manuscripts? Do Orbit or Angry Robot have teams of housebreakers and hackers going round pinching pages from winsome artistic types?<\/p>\n

Nonsense. All writers who seek publication want to be read and getting reviewed is one of the few ways that an amateur author (like me) can ever be (reasonably) sure that anyone has bothered to plough through one of their stories.<\/p>\n

Not only do I read reviews, I value them, even the ones that point out flaws or rip a story to shreds.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say a negative review isn\u2019t annoying, or even upsetting, but once the sting has passed there\u2019s usually something to be learned from the comments. As Aliette de Bodard points out (on page 8 of Focus 56 \u2013 back issues may be available…) there is an art to taking critiques, but I\u2019m always of the opinion that any review is better than being ignored.<\/p>\n

The old advice is that an author should never respond to a review\u00a0 \u2013 whether it is good or bad\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0 but there are times when that can be difficult.<\/p>\n

Usually it isn\u2019t the negative reviews that grate the most, but the ones where it doesn\u2019t feel as though the reviewer has paid attention to your story, the ones where they patently get things wrong or just don\u2019t get what you\u2019re trying to do but are content to go ahead and give their opinions anyway. And, sometimes, it\u2019s just the way the reviewer phrases something that makes your head hurt.<\/p>\n

In one review I received recently (of my story \u201cProper Little Soldier\u201d published in the Conflict<\/em> anthology from NewCon Press) the reviewer said he didn\u2019t like the story because it reminded her too much of Steven Spielberg\u2019s recent film War of the Worlds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I still have the bruise on my head where it impacted the desk, several times, after reading that line.<\/p>\n

What was my problem?<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t annoyed that the reviewer didn\u2019t care for my story, or that he compared my story to War of the Worlds.<\/em> Indeed my point when writing the story was deliberately to echo parts of that story.<\/p>\n

But he compared it to Steven Spielberg\u2019s War of the Worlds<\/em>.<\/p>\n

No!<\/p>\n

HG Wells. H! G! Bloody! Wells!<\/p>\n

The review still rankles, a little, even after all this time.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0 even this review tells me something. Actually it tells me a couple of things.<\/p>\n

First, never explain your story. Stories are a bit like jokes, if you have to tell someone why a joke is funny then either: (a) the joke wasn\u2019t funny to begin with; (b) you\u2019ve made a mess of telling it; or (c) the person you\u2019re telling the joke to doesn\u2019t share your sense of humour and you\u2019re wasting your time. If all of the people who read your story stare blankly at the last page and ask \u201cHuh?\u201d then you probably need to take it back to the drawing board. But if most readers understand it, shrug off the outlier\u2019s comments and get on with your life.<\/p>\n

Take \u201cProper Little Soldier\u201d, I wasn\u2019t surprised when that people made the connection between that story and HG Wells\u2019s classic \u2013 as I\u2019ve said, I had War of the Worlds<\/em> in mind when I wrote it and I wanted readers to make that link. What did disappoint me, slightly, was that having recognised the similarity, none of the reviewers went on to consider what it was about the story that was deliberately different from the original. But there\u2019s no point complaining about that. If readers missed what I was trying to do, it\u2019s because I obviously didn\u2019t do a good job of getting this point across. As I said, if I\u2019m left with the need to explain what I meant to everyone who comments on the story then I obviously haven\u2019t succeeded in getting that point across. Hopefully, though, there were enough other interesting bits in the story to make it work at other levels.<\/p>\n

Which leads me to the second point, don\u2019t obsess over it if not everyone likes or understands what you are trying to do. People react to things differently. There are people out there who prefer Billy Ray Cyrus to Bach\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0 you can\u2019t legislate for these people and you probably can\u2019t change their minds.\u00a0 If you\u2019re aiming for the Bach crowd (or, for that matter, the Billy Ray Cyrus crowd) don\u2019t worry about what the other lot think\u00a0 \u2013\u00a0 be grateful that there are some people who like what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

In the end you have to accept that, in putting your work out for public consumption, you are going to get criticised. Suck it up.<\/strong> Always remember that it\u2019s better to be read that to be ignored.<\/p>\n

Another story I had published last year, \u201cBarcode Babes\u201d (in Daybreak Magazine<\/a>), was a story I wrote several years ago and then sat on for ages, not sure whether to submit it. I worried that it\u2019s a story that some people might read differently from the way I intended \u2013 but Daybreak\u2019s editor Jetse de Vries got the essential optimism of the story and so when he asked to publish it I let it go ahead. I won\u2019t pretend, however, that I wasn\u2019t a bit worried when it went online.<\/p>\n

I needn\u2019t have fretted. So far as I can tell, no one has reviewed it anywhere.<\/p>\n

I got no feedback on the story whatsoever. I assume that it moved no one to anything other than a shrug and a meh!<\/p>\n

I\u2019d rather they\u2019d misunderstood it and hated me for it.<\/p>\n

Reviews, positive or negative, are part of being a writer. If you\u2019re getting any reviews you\u2019re making progress because your story has escaped from your head, made it to paper (or webpage) and is being read and thought about by someone other than your closest family members.<\/p>\n

Even a bad review is a good review.<\/p>\n

But, really…\u00a0 Steven Spielberg?<\/p>\n

Copies of Focus are available to BSFA members – if you’d like to read Focus, Vector and all the other cool stuff the BSFA produces go here and join now…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the new Focus is almost ready to go, I thought I’d put my editorial from issue 56 online (this is a slightly longer version than the one that appeared in the magazine)… I always seek out reviews of the stuff I get published. I know there are people who say they never look at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[32],"tags":[48,134,35],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-os","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2636,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/2636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}