This is me confused
Over and over the last year I’m been facing up to the overwhelming consensus that if I want to make it as a pro writer I’m going to have to stop reviewing. I’ve certainly encountered difficulties from it before. And in the past few months three writers I admire greatly have all come out and said that you can’t do both.
The most recent happened just today over at Stacia Kane’s blog. Sure she wasn’t talking directly to me, but it’s something we’ve talked about before. Bless her Stacia’s not being mean at all. She’s right in that once you get published things change, and you do lose the right to voice your opinion without people flipping out on you all the time, sometimes over nothing. This is why I’ve seriously slowed down in blogging, and reviewing. I don’t want to be the writer that only posts about their work, but the world kind of demands that.
But also today came my friend Nicole Cushing’s Apex blog post on short stories where she credits my recommending Jennifer Pelland’s Unwelcome Bodies to her at Context in 2008 not just for giving her an enjoyable read, but for jump starting her re-joining of the writing circle. I read Unwelcome Bodies for review.
And also today I found out that some of my coworkers read my reviews, which means they don’t just help me do my job better, but they might be helping them do theirs better. And it’s commonplace for us to get letters from librarians over at Monster Librarian thanking us for helping them choose which books best fit their collections.
So it’s a really tough spot I’m in, where I know that reviewing might be holding me back from that whole representation and NY contract thing, but it’s also adding so much to other parts of my life (not to mention I’m still making more as a reviewer than as a writer, and that’s not including bookseller pay which, by the way my stint as a reviewer and being able to list websites and editors as references got me in the first place.)
This is what a career as a writer is, looking at where you are, where you want to be and trying to guess how best to get there. And usually, there is no right answer. but is there a best answer, and if so, what the hell do I do now?
Lemme play the other side with a couple of Ms. Kane’s comments, and make one observation of my own:
1) “…[A]gents sign clients because they love their work…So if you hate my work because it’s nothing like the stuff you like, which presumably is the sort of thing you write…well, your work is probably pretty different from the kind of thing my agent likes, right? So there’s one strike against you.”
*** I don’t see this as an issue, because if the book you dislike ist what the agent likes… and you write differently from the books you dislike (I freakin’ hope so, anyhow)… the agent likely won’t be picking up what you’re putting down anyhow. Why the heck would you query agents who sell stuff you don’t like? And the ones you DO like, will probably be into your reviews because they’ll be complimentary.
2) I mentioned that I personally would be rather hurt if my agent signed someone who’d trashed me/my work, or even just said negative things about me/my work online. My friend Yasmine Galenorn agreed with me, and said she wouldn’t help that person out, either, like with a blurb or whatever. Which I agree with, as well.
*** Kind of the same thing as #1. If my agent, publisher or editor wants to slap a blurb on my book from an author I don’t like reading… well, I’d probably mention it, but if they think it’ll sell books, I’d probably back off. However, I wouldn’t be SEEKING OUT blurbs, reviews, etc. from authors I don’t enjoy reading, anyhow. If you make it to pro level, finding a fellow pro to blurb your book shouldn’t be hard. As a small press author, I’ve already had several pro authors graciously provide blurbs for my work, and if I remember right, you have too. You think it’ll get harder with the resources of the big machine behind you?
3) Not everyone is going to read your reviews or even know they exist, either because they don’t have time, or because they don’t read reviews of their work, or because too many reviews come in for them to keep up…
So my suggestion is to review if it makes you happy. I can’t recall reading an unprofessional review from you, even if you don’t like the book. That’s what I think is important. Not everyone is going to like every book, and I’d prefer to work with other people who understand that. If a pissing match over a politely-written negative review helps me weed out some of that, I can live with it.
Yes and yes. And I’ve had that discussion with Stacia too. But as you know some writers target everything with “agent” or “editor” associated with their name. Me submitting to publishers I liked is how Rot got published. And it’s how I work period. It seems like a duh to me. But many other writers don’t do that. Case and point: Colleen Lindsay resigned from being an agent almost a year ago, and still gets queries. In fact she has gotten people calling her at her new job to query her on the phone.
So far everyone has told me that things are different because I don’t do snarly or nasty reviews. I’m just not sure that would always been the case.
Yeah, I’ve come across such tales of fail in many agent blogs. However, I’ve always had a problem with rules geared toward the lowest common denominator, especially when they’ll hold back someone who knows better. =D