The Gold Medal of Book Reviews

Definitely not me!

Points can be a nasty thing to anyone who anyone who doesn’t excel in sports.  Running was required in the Army as part of the physical training test.  We had to score a certain number of points on each area to pass the test.  I was terrible at the running part, owing to my flat feet.  I’d run so hard that was I was physically exhausted, and my scores were always terrible.  I’d get sergeants looking at me like I must not be trying hard enough because it was always about the score.

The Olympics can be about points — in this case, the medals.  I watched two different reactions to winning.  Caitlin Leverenz took the bronze for the 200M Individual Medley, and she was excied because she’d done it.  Another swimmer who did very well and only missed by a fraction of a second was sour because he didn’t get the gold medal.  Yet, the only thing that happened was that someone else was better than him.  He didn’t have a problem with his feet like I did, and he didn’t have balance problems like the men’s gymnastics team did.

When did getting the highest score become so important, over everything else?  It’s always said how you lose is just as important as how you win.  And that’s also true when it comes to book reviews.

Reacting to Book Reviews

There’s been a lot of recent fire on the internet over book reviews.  There are a lot of writers who have had public meltdowns or attacked reviewers online — because they didn’t get five star reviews!

To win you have to risk loss.  ~Jean-Claude Killy

The obsession doesn’t go just for indie writers — There’s a pro writer on Amazon that has minions.  If anyone gives one his book a one-star review, they jump all over the reviewer and make life unpleasant.  Since I left the book a one-star review — for all the reasons the other people did — I’m afraid to go back and see how they’ve trashed me.

In the past, I’ve used reviews to determine if I want to buy a book.  Now when I see 5-star reviews, I tend to pass them by because I can’t trust the reviewers are being honest.  I’ve become wary of doing reviews because I don’t want to be the target of an irate author or his minions coming after me for merely writing my opinion.

Has all the hostility scared you off doing reviews?  As a reader do you still trust them to tell you about the book? 

 

When All Things Seem Possible

The elegant grace of a high dive

Sometimes there’s a time when all things seem possible, like the world opens up and we can tap unexpected magic.  I’ve been tuning in periodically to the 2012 Olympics in London, England.  My favorite sports — which is saying a lot since I don’t care for sports — are diving and the women’s gymnastics.  In 1996, one of the gymnasts on the U.S. team tapped into that magic.

Kerri Strug was getting ready to do her vault.  The stakes were very high.  Dominique Dawes had fallen on both her vaults, and the Russians hadn’t yet done their events.  The gold medal was at stake, and Kerri was it.   But she fell on her first vault, and it looked like she’d hurt her ankle.  But to the viewers, we couldn’t tell how bad it was — she went back to do the second vault like it wasn’t a problem.  She sped towards the vault, not showing any difficulties, and launched into the air.  When she came down, she nailed the landing.

On one foot.

And then we understand immediately after what she had done and how badly she had hurt her ankle.  She was carried to the medal ceremony, a big splint on her ankle.

Ooh! Sharp pointy things!

Writing fiction is like being out in that spotlight and making that decision. Creativity is not a team sport.  Only the individual can be creative.  Only we can decide to push through and be more.  And there are so many people around who will tell us we can’t do it.  I had a teacher tell me I wasn’t capable of being in a creative writing class, a very demoralizing and galvanizing experience.  Other writers can be the worst — I’ve been sneered at for the genres I choose, because I don’t outline, and because I like omniscient viewpoint.  Out there on the keyboard front, we’re like Kerri Strug on that day: Are we going to push through or are we going to let people rule us.  But we know when the story happens and it’s got us in the spotlight, it’s magic.

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