Mental Meanderings

Um, um, um - Stumbling in the black

Well, I must admit that I'm stumbling about for something worth writing about here today. I was going to comment about taking my dog to the groomer since that's basically all that's planned for today other than the regular school to and from. But, really, who cares about dog grooming (well I suppose it's of interest to some people, like the groomers.)

Anyway, I ducked over to Scarlett's Blog in the hopes of stealing her ideas. (At least I admit it Scarlett, I'm an honest theif ) She wrote about a review she recieved that offered more confusion about the reviewers state of mind than anything.

I write a lot of poetry and I think poetry gets a lot of lame reviews (I know mine does but maybe it's just because I'm a terrible poet.) These days I've learnt not to care about reviews good or bad. There is still a tingle of annoyance when someone rates it a 3 or 4 star (and even a 4.5) and all they say is that they really enjoyed it, or loved it or whatever. I'm left wondering what I could do to bring them to 5 stars.

I used to reply to these reviews and ask outright, "Look buddy, you said you loved it but only rated it a 3.5, what could I do to make this a 5 star poem in your opinion?" More often than not the reviewer has no idea why it's not perfect to them. I suspect the comment is a cop out, it's there just to keep their rating to review ratio maxed. In this case the rating is more important.

These days I've taken to giving a standed response that thanks them for taking the time to read, rate and review. If there was some substance to the review I'll expound more in the response but if not then that's basically it. I write the thanks (I mean they did, after all, take the time to read, rate and review and I appreciate the value of time.) Then I delete the review and give it no more thought.

I have to admit that I avoid giving meaningless reviews. If I cannot offer anything useful to the writer their peice won't get a rating. On my bad days I might read something but not be up to reviewing because of my own mental state (I don't want to review because I'll come across as a bitch and be a bit nastier than they deserve.) I leave it unrated as well as unreviewed because it means I can come back and do it another time (if I happen to come across it again someday).

Writing.com is the best place I've found when it comes to recieving feedback. There are other sites out there that encourage feedback but a lot of the time the ratio of smoke blowing vs. constructive is well tipped toward the smoke blowing side of things. There is some of that here but for the most part reviews are helpful even if they offer little feedback. Perhaps I don't have a full picture of it all since I'm basing my opinion on personal experience. I don't pay attention to my item ratings so I don't know if I've been given an anonymous low rating and I've never recieved a review (anonymous or otherwise) that ranted on about how terrible something was.

It all really comes down to common sense as a writer. You accept the good reviews with the bad. Read each one, take what you want from them and then trash them. Even a great review might have comments that you disagree with. Just because the reviewer knew how to put a few lines together doesn't mean that they know what is best for your own work. You have to use your own judgement to decide if their suggestions will improve your piece. If they won't then ignore them. It's the only way to prevent a conflict because each reviewer is different and they'll occasionally have opposing views.

I know this from experience. I've done a survey of sorts about one of my poems. (Baby Boy) I originally wrote the poem with no punctuation and recieved a couple of reviews that suggested adding punctuation would improve the poem. I was undecided, punctuation has merits but this poem was a little 'listy' and punctuation very tricky to include. Ultimately I felt that adding punctuation would force my interpretation on the readers where as leaving it unpunctuated allowed them to decide how they emphasised things.

Anyway, because of the reviews and my indicision I decided to punctuate the poem and put them both together on one page with a comment about how I was undecided and please tell me which version you prefer or if you would change any of the punctuation. You know what? I was write, since then about 50% of people thought the unpunctuated better and obviously 50% thought the punctuated version the best. Reviews that offered suggestions on alternate punctuation vary so greatly from each other and my own that it really does emphasise that every reader gets something different from a poem.

So, having said that I've learnt to write it the way you feel it should be written. Accept reviews and read them, if they offer you something you feel you can use, use it, but otherwise say thanks and use the trash can. Just because they took the time to review does not mean that they are right.

The other thing I always do is pay attention to the skill of the reviewer. If their review is full of spelling errors and they are offering you advice on spelling, get out the dictionary to check the correct spelling, they could be correcting you incorrectly. Same goes for grammar, if they are offering grammar suggestions and could improve their own, check it. (Makes me think of Dan's review for The Dating Game Chapter 01. He made a grammar correction and he's usually great with grammar but I'm still going to get out my book and check on that specific rule. No offense Dan but it's something I've never done with my writing and I'd like to learn the official way to handle it. Bet you 10,000GPs you are right, but I'm always up for learning new things. )

Anyway, I've rambled on and I guess I at least had something half interesting to talk about. My entry offers companionship to Scarlett's so make sure you stop in there to read hers and offer a constructive comment.