And What She Found There...

So I finally was given access to the reviews of my first three chapters of my book from the Amazon Vine Reviewers last night, and discovered why it didn't advance in the Amazon Novel Breakthrough contest.

Simply put, my book's purpose was communicated successfully to one of the reviewers, who thought the character was bumbling, but in the right way, and seemed in general to enjoy the story, but not to the other, who found the whole thing well-written but boring.

Likely it was that second review that meant the story didn't make it from the top 2000 into the top 500 round.

The difficulty here, is that without names, to make the analogy to American Idol judging, that I don't know the tastes and reading personalities of the reviewers here. While I can likely take something constructive from the second person's critique--after all, it's quite a long one--I suspect that person is simply a bigger fan of action-based fiction. While my story has action in it, it's more of a character-based story than action-based.

This is why I'm glad I've had multiple people I trust read the story and give me feedback--it's given me a better idea of how different types of readers react to elements in my book in different ways. I'm sure I can learn from the one reviewer's critique, as I said, but the fact that the reviews weren't unanimous actually frees me to take what they say with a grain of salt. If you get mixed reviews, after all, it can be a matter of taste behind them. (Plus it helps that I've been on the other side of this process, and know that it's partially about taste anyway.)

Anyway, I wish I had more time to think over my next steps with this manuscript (I've been having some revision ideas for awhile now), but I don't really have a chance to do anything more with it until a few more weeks have passed anyway. So, for now, I must sit back for a moment, respect the reviewers' opinions but not take them too seriously, then get back to thinking about the tasks I need to do and the papers I need to write to finish up this, my last full semester of PhD coursework. (Woohoo!)

One last encouraging thought, though--both thought the thing was well-written, and one of them got what I was going for. Not so bad, really. The manuscript must be worth pursuing in some form for awhile longer.

The Human Side of Submissions

Cheryl Klein had a fabulous blog entry on Monday, touching on the difficulty some editors have with the rejection process. The entry is largely composed of a couple of paragraphs of an essay by Brian Doyle.

It's a beautiful essay, and having spent several years in the world of publishing--having worked in a publishing house and from my positions on the editorial staff of The Fieldstone Review, along with a couple of other publications--I can totally empathize with him. My favorite lines:

"So very often I find myself admiring grace and effort and craftsmanship, honesty and skill, piercing and penetrating work, even as I turn to my computer to type a rejection note.... So very many people working so very hard to connect, and here I am, slamming doors day after day."

However, as a writer who's eagerly waiting with fear and trembling, many tenterhooks involved and all that, to hear back on a novel query, I also can empathize really well with the fourth commenter to the blog post, who said:

"It's not always that a writer, especially a new one, is trying to get one up on a potential editor by sending work that is irrelevant to him/her. Sometimes, a raw inspiration to write does not come with a guide to the literary world or a guide to those guides."

It seems to me that both sides could use a bit of appreciation of the difficulties the other faces, and remember, after all, that it's humans on the other side of the desk. The editors really are looking for good work, but they're also needing to make money to stay afloat, and sometimes they have bad days.

And the writers, well, sometimes they have taken a huge amount of work just to get to this point, not to mention a huge risk and psychological oomph, just to get to where they're willing to send their stuff (I'm particularly thinking of you here, Ril--you go, girl).

There are times when both are idiots, for sure. But I'd like to think that there are--or at least can be, or should be--moments of humanity and recognition of the Other's perspective within the whole thing. I must believe so, because my writing censors work very hard to make me cynical about the whole process.