I’ve had a couple less than stellar book reviews lately, so I wrote them back nasty responses and told them how awesome my books are!

No, I didn’t.

Haha. Actually, I’m not really bothered with negative reviews. No, I don’t go searching for them, but I get it. Heck, it’s tough to get a good review out of me. I give negative reviews to lots of things. Hollywood is my punching bag, so I frequently give bad reviews to professionals who make their living making creative content. Example: I loved “Parks & Rec Seasons 1-6.”  I just started season 7 the other day and I thought “What garbage is this?” The writing has taken a terrible turn into terribleness. So, yeah. I get it. Everyone is going to have different opinions about the creative arts, but I digress.

Not everyone is going to like how I write, how I develop characters, how I plot a story. I don’t even like it sometimes, especially when I read something I wrote a year ago. So first off, I don’t take it personally and I don’t let it stop me from doing what I love.

However, I have learned to try to understand why someone has a view they have so I can learn from it. I had one reviewer that noticed some inconsistencies in a story which I never noticed before. Nor did my editor. Or any of my other beta readers or people in the universe. But when I looked at the manuscript, the reader was right. I had it wrong. How? I have no idea. It happens.

So I went back today and re-wrote a few sections to even out the details. Now it’s better.

And that, my friends, is the best way to handle bad reviews. Learn from them if you can. If there is nothing to learn (and often there isn’t) then wash it away and forget.

Every writer or creative artist will run into criticism. You can’t escape it. The best thing to do is acknowledge it and move on.