“What are the nicest or most inspiring things people have said or written about your writing? How did it affect you?”
Whether a writer wants it to or not, what a reviewer says about his/her book always has an impact. One exception to this rule is when the review is obviously written just to trash a book. I’ve had one like that, and I don’t think the writer ever even read the book. I can only guess that the reviewer didn’t like the good reviews the book had gathered.
Not all of my reviews have been five stars, and when they aren’t I always read them and try to decide if the reviewer is right. You can learn a lot from such a review. Can you learn a lot if the review is really great? Well, when I get a great review I never stop to question it. I just think the reader had great taste, LOL.
What a great review does is confirm my belief in myself. Sometimes when I’m writing I’ll have a moment of doubt and wonder if what I’m doing is good enough, but most of the time I always like what I write. Sure, I have to tweak it, but I usually think what I’m doing is good. Getting those good reviews encourages me to keep writing, and as I said it makes me believe in myself. Can you be a good writer if you don’t believe in yourself? I’m not sure. I don’t think I could be.
I’m especially proud of the Amazon reviews I got for Blue 52. Every one of them is five stars, and I didn’t know a single person who posted them so no one was trying to flatter me. I wrote one inspirational romance that got a review that warmed my heart, but I think the one I most loved was a review that I got for Rest Thy Head. It isn’t profound; it doesn’t discuss the various aspects of writing, but I think it came from the heart, and it pleased me to death. It gave me inspiration to write more. I made a meme out of it, and I’ll post it here for you. The review is exactly as it was written on Amazon. This is exactly the reaction I hope all my readers have.
