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Recent Reviews for Shelly Greenhalgh-Davis
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Bad Reviews are the Best: From a Writer's Viewpoint (Article) - 3/13/2013 7:02:40 AM
I haven't read your work, but you are courageous to write about Native American life. I once suggested to one of my black friends with white grandfathers (I know at least four) that I could write an interesting multigenerational novel about that, but she advised me against it, perhaps because the idea was too close to home. Recently, another friend trying to recover the history of these two wife families (one white and one black) from his own heritage has suggested that I could write about it.
I've only had one review by a professional reviewer. His genre was horror and he wrote a column for a local newspaper. He read my first two novels while on a trip over the Christmas holidays and then wrote me that he couldn't write a review because of my poor writing and lack of character development. I was grateful that he didn't but found out that while both books were supposedly edited by my publisher, they weren't. So I have edited them myself and republished them as second editions. Perhaps that's what incensed the reviewer. What made me most angry was that he never mentioned the subject matter, more important than the characters. Since then many people have commented on the ideas in these novels very favorably.
I'm not particularly fond of Stephen King although I do like some of his work. I was watching the movie, Thinner, and was surprised to find that King had named his villain in the novel after that same reviewer that dissed me. I remembered that he was primarily a horror (fantasy) reviewer and had probably reviewed every one of King's books. My writing was science-based like Arthur C Clarke and therefore not something that the reviewer had a taste for.
Ron
Should You Write Books in Order? (Article) - 3/13/2013 6:36:05 AM
I am a planner, but not an ultra-planner. I have a plan in my head before I write a novel, but I have never used an outline to write anything. Somehow my mind allows me to write from beginning to end without having to return to other parts of the work and rewrite them. I have had friends who rewrote constantly and usually came up with very good work. Perhaps that's my fatal flaw that has others criticizing my work. Maybe I should spend more time perfecting it.
On the other hand, like you, I tend to write down ideas that I have to use later, especially with short stories. Recently I had two ideas for short stories. Before I got a chance to write one of them down, I forgot the second. I also starting writing an idea I had and found that it just didn't make sense. That's the first time that happened with a short story. Still, I think I'll revisit that story and see if I can make it make more sense. I wouldn't want to have the reader thinking I didn't know what I was writing about.
Ron
Bad Reviews are the Best: From a Reader's Viewpoint (Article) - 3/13/2013 6:27:46 AM
Helpful and [W]right on.
Ron
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