Evaluation

A recent online review of my lat­est book, Loy­al­ty, read: “…since most of [Avi’s] books are short sto­ries … I felt it was a lit­tle too long.” 

How am I to respond to such a state­ment? After all, I have more than eighty pub­li­ca­tions. Only five of them have been short-sto­ry collections. 

Did the read­er con­fuse me with some oth­er writer? 

Had the read­er only read those five short sto­ry collections? 

Is the read­er some­one who only reads short stories? 

What does “a lit­tle too long” mean? Ten pages? A hun­dred pages? A tad vague, no? 

Con­sid­er your own pro­fes­sion. Per­haps you are an insur­ance bro­ker. Or in sales. Or a teacher. Per­haps a librar­i­an. You’ve worked at your job for any num­ber of years. One day some­one (you have no idea who) from man­age­ment comes along, sits down, and for three or four hours watch­es you as you pur­sue your tasks. Then that per­son dash­es off an eval­u­a­tion of your work and pub­lish­es it online. 

What would be your reaction? 

We all know what’s hap­pened with inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions, how folks write what­ev­er comes to mind, what­ev­er they feel. It has become a major social prob­lem. Some sug­gest that anonymi­ty is a fac­tor in this phe­nom­e­non. What comes to mind is the notion, “You are enti­tled to your own opin­ions. You are not enti­tled to your own facts.” 

It’s also true that if one is a writer part of your world is to receive pub­lic crit­i­cism, pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, and every­thing in between. It’s inher­ent in the nature of the work. You live with it. Hope­ful­ly, learn from it. 

There is a sto­ry I once heard—I don’t know if true, but I like it: Lau­rence Olivier—the famed Eng­lish stage actor—was work­ing with Charl­ton Heston—an equal­ly famed (most­ly screen) actor in a play. The pro­duc­tion must have got­ten mixed reviews. Hes­ton said, “Well, I guess we’ve just got to for­get the bad reviews.” To which Olivi­er is report­ed to have replied, “No, we’ve got to for­get the good ones.” 

Good reviews are sup­port­ive, mean­ing­ful, and help­ful to a writer. They can sug­gest what you have done well. They can keep you going. That said, if the same neg­a­tive crit­i­cism comes up, again and again, you need to pay atten­tion. Learn. But even as you need to learn from crit­i­cal reviews, you have to learn to ignore what are ill-informed responses. 

The truth is, there is no end to learn­ing the art of writ­ing. Reviews are part of that learning. 

One of the ques­tions kids often ask me—adults ask it too—is, “What book do you think is your best?” 

My sin­cere answer is, “I’m try­ing to write it now.”