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The Writer as Reviewer – a note from the author - Download The Author Essay

“Don’t do it, it’ll kill your writing,” a writer friend warned me when, seven years ago, I first mentioned I was going to be a book critic for the Boston Globe. I can’t say I was that surprised by her response; a lot of writers I know won’t review books at all. They don’t want to risk reading a book they may not like, having to give another writer the kind of review we’ve all gotten at one time or another — you know, the one that makes you feel that maybe it’s not too late to give it up and go to dental school. A writer writing reviews is incestuous, I’m told. Shouldn’t we really just be concentrating on our own writing rather than taking apart someone else’s for all the world to see?

Ah, I beg to differ.

I want to review because I’m passionate about books and writers. And for me, reviewing opens up writing in ways one wouldn’t expect. Having to read critically, instead of for the pure, dizzy enjoyment of being lost in a read, forces me to look at a book differently: I notice what’s working and why, and what is leaving me adrift. This, in turn, impacts how I write. Writing is always challenging — but I’ve slowed down, gotten more meticulous, because of everything I’m learning from reading other writers critically. I take note of a great first line, a reveal I never expected — and I begin to tuck those techniques into my own author’s toolbox. Reading as a reviewer is like seeing the scaffolding of a building, the bones beneath the skin. Reviewing actually makes me more conscious of not just how and why books work but how and why I want my own to work.

While I knew I could learn a lot from reviewing great books, I was happy to see I could learn even more from the ones that faltered. Recognizing a flaw in someone else’s work can prevent me from making that gaffe in my own. Having to read flowery, fussy language makes me stop every time I think about adding what seems like a perfectly good adjective. Closing a book unsatisfied because the ending ties everything up in a neat bow makes me work harder at my own grand finales, making sure they’re more open ended, that they provide more of a never-ending story that makes you wonder about the character’s next step even after you’ve shut the book. I’ve learned that if I don’t love a book by the first twenty pages, chances are I’m not going to love it for the next three hundred. This means I spend months on my own first chapter, honing it, getting it exactly right. What I most love are the books that aren’t afraid to break a few rules. A meditative chapter might not advance the story, but you know the book would be less without it. A character who leaps into a book midstream, tells his story, and then vanishes can somehow tie the book together. These things give me the courage to wander, to take risks in my own novels.

It’s awful to have to give a bad review, but even bad reviews can be helpful. I realize no one sets out deliberately to write a bad book (and I know that most of my writer friends and I are always terrified that we somehow have), but sometimes a bad review gives helpful feedback. For example, a line in a New York Times review for my first novel, Meeting Rozzy Halfway, mentioned that my “back-story was sparkling while the front story faded.” This taught me how to pay more attention to making things more immediate. I try to give the same sort of critical help, because I feel that all writers are in the trenches together and we should do what we can to help one another. Plus, false praise is disrespectful to another writer, like telling a friend he looks terrific even though there is that bit of salad greenery lodged in his teeth that he could easily get rid of if someone would gently point it out.

I love reviewing. When I’m desperate to figure out my story, I always study what worked for other writers I’ve reviewed — and what didn’t. But when I’m deep in the writing zone, engaged in my character’s struggles, I don’t consciously think about anything but the world I’m lost in creating. It’s then that I hope that all those techniques and tools will emerge, organic as seedlings and just waiting to sprout on my pages.