I trust I'm not alone in that when I check out the reader reviews on sites like Amazon, I always look at the lowest scores first.It's not literary schadenfreude that drives me, it's the same approach I take with my own work. Some would say that makes me a glass empty kinda guy. More accurately, I think, I see life fundamentally as a set of problems to be solved.
This particular chicken came home to roost recently when I was putting together a feedback overview as part of my submission package to a literary agent. While the good stuff was.... well, good, what caught my eye were the weaknesses and snags and the queries about my occasionally idiosyncratic approach to grammar.
Writers, as a breed, tend to abhor criticism. The first rejection is like a broken heart and over time we become inured to it. Deep down though, most of us believe, just like mother that we know best.
But objective, constructive feedback is priceless to a writer, whatever the genre. It is the magic mirror that tells no lies. And even I have no problem with that.
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