{"id":3405,"date":"2019-10-24T07:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/?p=3405"},"modified":"2019-10-23T21:52:08","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T01:52:08","slug":"writing-life-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2019\/10\/24\/writing-life-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Life: Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have a weird relationship with reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the one hand, I’m a firm believer in the idea that creators create. It doesn’t matter what you’re creating. As the creator, it’s up to you to determine what it is you’re making. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s absolutely vital that you maintain ownership, that you don’t cede control of your art to your audience. In order to do that, you have to view all feedback as input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can’t be emotional about it. You have to treat reviews in the same way that you treat responses in a critique group<\/a>: they’re simply opportunities to improve your craft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a writer, I want to know if something does or does not work. I can use that to continue to improve myself. Emotion just gets in the way of that sort of analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, how can I not respond emotionally to someone talking about what I’ve created? More to the point, I want<\/em> to respond emotionally. I want to stay connected to my readers, and not just on an intellectual writerly level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, writing is an emotional act. It’s exciting and frustrating and maddening all at once. I read aloud as I write. I laugh. I sometimes even cry (read The Boy With The Sword<\/a> and you’ll understand). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t want to detach my emotions from the process, not even when I’m reading the reviews. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what do I do? Do I reject my emotional response, and focus on the intellectual gains to be made? Or do I jump on the roller coaster and feel every high and low that comes with it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think each of us has to answer that question differently. Some of us want to protect ourselves. We want to keep an even keel, and maintain a writerly distance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not me. I choose the roller coaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all get reviews: at work, at school, even at home. Writers and game designers get them in a much more public way. How do you deal with them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-SV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3405"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3408,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3405\/revisions\/3408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}