Blogging Blast #4: Consider the reviewer, not just the review-ee

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(So just what is a Blogging Blast?? — BLOGGING BLAST #4)

My hubby wrote a book. He’s written several actually, self-published a few, set them up on Amazon, had a few sales, and all of that. We’ve even gotten some decent reviews (I say “we” since I’m the one who finds the reviewers and sends his stuff out there, kinda a mom and pop writer/publicist arrangement…we have fun.)

In the past, long before the proliferation of the Indie movement, he would get plenty of rejection notices from already established publishing houses. You sort of get used it, I suppose, things like “this is not what we are looking for currently” and the like. So, to oldies like us, the actually Send-Me-Your-Book-And-I-Will-Read-It kind of Indie review is a fairly new and open road.

And not one without its own hazardous potholes.

Now, it’s one thing to get a private rejection slip in a form letter when your work has only been presented in an abbreviated few pages. It’s quite another when a full review comes back with your work scathingly misinterpreted and misunderstood, intent and all.

On the Amazon review site.

And Goodreads.

(At this writing, the wound is still somewhat fresh.)

It’s a brutal area to launch out into, this world of all things artistic.

(Well, it’s a brutal world, period, when you really stop to consider…) You either grow a thick skin pretty quick or you bleed out just as fast.

Makes me consider even more poignantly of the “risk” God took in sending His Son, Jesus, to make His definitive statement to the world at large. God seriously put His heart and soul on the line by sending His Son Jesus. The Apostle John puts it this way:

^“He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him.”

Ouch. That’s not just a private rejection or a difference of opinion on style and genre. They flat-out didn’t know Him. Total misinterpretation of mission (even from His own closest comrades), complete misunderstanding of mind and breakdown of communication.

Despite this, He chose to have human skin, but not “thick skin”; instead, He literally allowed His skin (and His heart) to be pierced, and He bled out for us.

On a cross.

Publically.

My husband’s literary scars will serve him well in the future as his writing prowess increases. This experience into the foray of writing is a growing process.

Even more so, am I grateful for the scars that Jesus bears for me so that the writing of His love can ever appear on my heart when I stand with Him face to face.

And then, only one Review will matter.

Author: dawnlizjones

Tends toward TMI, so here's the short list: guitar and banjo (both of which have been much neglected as of late), bicycling (ibid), dogs, very black tea, and contemplating and commenting on deep philosophical thoughts about which I have had no academic or professional training. Oh, also reading, writing, but I shy away from arithmetic. View all posts by dawnlizjones

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