Timothy's Thoughts

H ow do you handle criticism? As writers, we open ourselves up for it. We labor over some of the decisions we make with our writing, from what our characters like to the theme of our books to whether to self-publish or traditionally publish. It is all open to scrutiny and every writer has his share of praise and criticism. We love the praise, but the criticism is hard to take. It might be better if we don’t handle criticism the way mediabistro.com reports Alice Hoffman reacted to a less than ideal review . Allegedly, she chose to respond by Tweeting the reviewer’s phone number and e-mail address, encouraging her fans to respond to the review. I can think of worse things she could have done, but the word for this is vengeance . She later apologized . I’m sure most of us have looked at something someone said or did that we didn’t like and thought, “I’m going to make him pay. He’ll regret he ever did that.” If I were to guess, that is what I believe must have been going through Alice Hof...

E ver wondered how you can get you’re your readers’ attention? Though not specifically addressing that question, in his March 2009 pod cast Andy Stanley talks about five questions that can help. He was speaking to a group of pastors on the subject of how leaders would effectively communicate their vision to an audience, but it occurred to me that these five questions apply to writers as well. Their application in the non-fiction realm is obvious. Most of what he says in his pod cast applies directly, so I want to focus on the fiction realm instead, with the assumption that you will go listen to his pod cast. What do they need to know? Novels provide information. You might think of a historical novel and some historical tidbit that you gleaned from its pages, but that isn’t what we’re talking about. What people need to know is the events of the story. Our readers need to know the problems our protagonist faces, how he tries to solve them and the result of his actions. But which proble...