Shake that groove thing
One of the coolest things about having two kids? For family dance parties, we all have a partner. We've been having lots of family dance parties lately. For a while, Max wouldn't allow Dean and me to dance at all. (We tried not to take it personally. Surely it wasn't a critcism of our extremely fine groove moves.) Now he's lifted the ban, on occassion. I got an ipod speaker for Christmas, and we play music in the kitchen while I make dinner. It's probably my favorite time of day.
Maggie is doing so much better at night! I'm so proud of her. (knock on wood) She is going two hours between feedings at night and sometimes even longer. And she's so gorgeous. I'm not in the least biased, I'm sure, when I say she's the most gorgeous baby in the entire world. She's starting to grin at me, and then I just have to attack those cheeks and kiss 'em up.
Reading the comments on the last blog, I'll give my thoughts on negative reviews. I read all the reviews of my books that come my way, but I no longer seek them out. They are not helpful to a writer. The truth is, not everyone is going to like what you write. There is no possible way to write something that will appeal to everyone's tastes. We're all individuals. You have to write to yourself. That doesn't mean that writers shy from criticism. The rewrite process I go through with all my books would've made me weep and curl up into fetal position when I wasn't used to it. Many people read my manuscripts, including my editor, and with each draft give pages of notes about what is wrong with it and what doesn't work. I myself am a harsh editor of my own work. I spend months and years searching for ways I've failed with the story and for ways to improve it. I consider every criticism of the manuscript very seriously. It's an arduous, often painful, and completely essential process for writing the best book possible. The positive outcome of this torture is that by time each of my books is published, I feel very confident that it was the absolute best I could do.
Getting negative feedback after a book is published is not helpful to a writer. Sometimes, it can throw me off so much, shake my confidence, so that writing that day or week is very hard. That's not the reviewer's fault, it's mine, but it may be why some writers avoid all reviews. It may be important for that reviewer to express their opinion, but that opinion is for the reader's sake, not mine. The book is already published, there's nothing I can do to change it, and I wouldn't change it if I could. I wrote the book that I wanted to read. Besides, I couldn't possibly listen to everyone. For example, some readers have told me that the goose girl was paced too slowly and they couldn't get into it; others have said that they were captivated from the first page and loved the writing style. How can I please both kinds of readers? I can't. I can only write the book for my internal audience and, heeding the advice of my editor and early readers, rewrite it the best I can. When people tell me things they don't like about my books, all I can do is acknowledge that they have every right to have that reaction, and then move on.