I’ve posted a survey to twitter to ask about gender and genre…and  holy crap! Hundreds of views in an hour and a half, and 70? or so replies so far. I’m amazed, humbled, and just…floored by the response. Thank you to everyone! I’m scurrying to get ahead of the data, and I’ll be putting together a note about the survey later today, even as I find other places to host the survey to help with what seems to be a female-bias of responses coming from Twitter so far.

There are two versions of the survey circulating. One of them has a problem with question #7 – it doesn’t allow for more than one reply. I fixed this in version 2, and any following versions to come (each survey only allows for 100 replies) If you get version 1.0 and want to explain your answer for Q7, please feel free to use the “explain” box for the final question to do so!

I completely and totally underestimated the interest in this question, and in the responses and support so far. Just…holycrap and thank you all.

So, here’s the deal on reviews. A bunch of people are getting their knickers in a twist over bad reviews, what they call bad reviewers, etc. etc. A lot of them are saying that reviews/reviewers are breaking The Rules, that they’re not objective.

‘kay, so…um. Here’s the thing. I don’t think reviews should be objective. I don’t think that they CAN be. We all bring our own stuff to a review. Our own likes and dislikes, our own points of view on things. One of “the rules” according to one person is that you should never mention grammar or spelling errors. But…why?! I’m a writer – I can’t read books with atrocious grammar or bad spelling. That doesn’t mean that other people can’t ignore that shit; they can and do.

Some of my favorite people have recommended to me some books that I just. couldn’t. stand. Why? Because I could see through the story to the editor beyond. “Hey, readers won’t like it if this character does this for no good reason…fix that!”. Or shaky point-of-view shit, or just…any other thing that comes from having sent my own books through CPs and editors a few times, and a freelance editing gig a few years back. My perspective is that of someone who works ‘behind-the-scenes’. My friend can’t stand cop/lawyer shows because they’re so NOT the way it works in real life. Me? Toss a dead body on the TV screen and I’m hooked. Every time. No matter how bad the show is. ::sheepish:: But I love talking to her about them because she gets all Southern-ranty telling me how it don’t work like that, and I can assure her that I know that, but I just love watching the mystery unfold.

So here’s the deal. Who’s a review for? The reviewer. It’s their reaction to a book, based on where they are in their life, based on how they’re feeling, what they had for lunch, and whether they’ve slept in the last week. Sometimes, you’ll find a reviewer whose taste in books align with yours and you can trade book recommendations one to another. Sometimes, I find a reviewer I disagree with and read their reviews. I like reading really feminist readings of books, because my brain isn’t, yet, trained to realize the insidiousness of misogyny in a lot of the books I read. I very often find myself sheepishly reading those reviews and thinking “but..I liked that book…”

And, one last thing, it’s often said that writers shouldn’t review. Because while we might not think what we’ve said was all that damning, an author might take it badly and never want to work with us again. Might badmouth us. Or it might be seen as malicious. And as authors, our ‘word’ might mean more, might seem to hold more credulity than any other reviewer. I find this the saddest thing, pretty much ever, since I love to talk about books and deconstruct books and analyze them and think on them and disagree with people on them and there’s one book that I’d love to write the longest, most ranting letter ever about because it made me so mad and I’d really like to talk to people who’ve read the book to see if it made THEM mad, too…but I respect the advice I’ve been given and I don’t review books.

Instead, I trolled the Ranty Book’s Goodread reviews and discovered…other people were pissed at it, too. They even managed to articulate why, when, at the time, I was just ready to take the book and hang it from the ceiling fan, light it on fire, and watch it fly. But they were allowed to talk about it in a community of readers, and I have to admit I’m jealous of that.

In no particular order, these vs. that I find myself in are as follows:

white vs. non-white

female vs. male

reader vs. author

gay vs. straight

author vs. editor

published vs. unpublished

short vs. tall!

Now, of course I can’t simply will myself to be taller (though I have tried, particularly when the chocolates are on the uppermost shelf). But really, simply being short doesn’t mean I am anti-tall. It doesn’t mean I hate, resent, or even am jealous of tall people. It simply means that I got Mom’s genes instead of Dad’s as far as height goes. It doesn’t mean I plot against tall people. It doesn’t mean I wish they’d all die.

It just means I’m short.

And I have to admit that seeing these things scroll through my twitter feed is disturbing, mostly because with twitter, I can see how quickly they spread, how prevalent they are. And my mind fast-forwards to when this is the way that people interact with one another. Where we can’t admit any little detail about ourselves because it will alienate us, immediately, from a majority of people in the room. I just imagine an old-time ball, the ballroom divided in half–men on one side, women on the other. Then half again as white men and women and separate from the men and women of color. They, then, divide based on sexual orientation. Favorite color. Favorite food…

…until the only person in the world you’re not, immediately considered “against” by virtue of simply being who you are…is yourself.

Honestly, I’m not really sure there’s much point to blogging anymore, but until I have enough backlist to replace the categories with book genres, I’ll try to keep it up.

Besides, I promised some T-13 lists in my bio, so I might as well keep that up, right?