Don’t Let Them Make It Real

Posted on September 11, 2013 Updated on September 11, 2013

When I’m in the middle of an intense scribbling period I really tune out the rest of the world. This is a very bad thing. I make a huge effort to check out what’s going on in the world around me, but nothing sinks in. My feathered horde take to foraging for marshmallows in the cupboard because I forget to put them out. And supper… Well… We’ll say no more about that. Poor husband guy. I don’t mean to be such a tool. The problem is that the only way out of this mode is a conscious effort to concentrate on “Other Stuff”. If I do this then I can forget the whole scribbling thing. Writers block? Who knows? It’s just a thing I suppose. Right now, I’m in this scribbling thing. Twenty pages of African Me to go. Then I can launch the bugger, toss a bottle of champagne – at myself – and move on on. So I haven’t been very clued up on what’s going on in the big old writers universe. I have spotted something that keeps on popping up though.

Lately I’ve noticed a terrible furore growing on Goodreads. This is most uncool. One “author” created a whole lot of false persona fans to love himself up, and then was dumb enough to trash a whole lot of other authors for no apparent reason. It was kind of apparent to me though. The guy was thick as two short planks. In the old days of traditional publishing this sort of thing would have been laughed out of the building. Now, anything goes it would seem. Barely literate one star “reviews” are popping up all over the place, totally negating the value of other reviews left by genuine readers who actually are more or less acquainted with the English language. So Indie Scribblers. I have to say. Reviews now count for not a whole lot.

How can you take the five stars seriously when you are so vociferously saying that the ones are from jealous, uneducated tools? You can’t. If someone really does not like your book, they are entitled to say so. And you can’t sort the wheat from the chaff with Amazon and Goodread’s systems. With independent publishing comes independent reviewing. This whole sideshow has taken the value out of any review in my book. I personally have one one star review. For me, it was a rite of passage. You’re not really an indie scribbler until someone calls you a tool and hates everything that you wrote. And your granny too. And calls you ugly. I know that my good reviews were genuine, and that’s enough for me. I’m not going to launch myself into a free for all with a bunch of vicious, stupid, trolls. I don’t think that petitions to Goodreads are the way to go. I’m going to get SO shot down here. I know. I just think that fighting that sort of breed of cretin is just going to generate a lot of compost. And those guys sitting under their bridges are going to love every minute of it.

Leave this issue well alone indie guys, and let the trolls bore themselves out of the picture without your input. It really isn’t worth your time. Just write on.