When you get a bad review, it makes sense to behave like a Wild Thing, and gnash your terrible teeth. You may rant and moan and complain. You may cry or eat pints of ice cream or otherwise self-medicate. These are all reasonable responses.

Here are some things that are not so reasonable:

1. Posting a point by point rebuttal on the reviewer’s GoodReads page (and Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. . .). Doing so on the commercial sites makes the writer look, in my opinion, petty. Doing so on their personal page is crossing a line.
2. Sending a private message to the reviewer via Facebook explaining why the reviewer was just plain wrong. Again, this would be a big line between professional personal that should not be crossed.
3. Calling the reviewer’s place of work to verify if (s)he is indeed a librarian in their employ. This is when the reviewer starts to get scared.

I have more stories, but the reviewers don’t want to reopen old wounds — or re-attract the attention of the writers. These actions led to the reviewers contacting the editors of their magazines (big magazines!). “Crazy and difficult” is not how I want to be thought of by the journals that can make or break my books.

1. I am guest blogging at Hope’s Bookshelf today. In honor of her birthday, I actually share something from the journal I kept in high school.

2. Hope is also hosting a giveaway of Secrets of Truth & Beauty. Go on over and enter to win your free copy!

3. I don’t often post links to my reviews in the blog, but this one really touched me. I think we write to reach others and to be understood, and this review makes me feel like I succeeded.

4. I got my contributor copy for the Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Marketplace, and man that is one useful book, no matter where you are in your writing career. Sara Zarr’s essay on revision was particularly eloquent, and I’m looking forward to Ellen Wittlinger’s piece on including GLBT characters.

5. Laurie Halse Anderson is encouraging people to write every day in August. I admit I haven’t managed to do it (writing under the influence of the post-wisdom teeth extraction painkillers seemed a bad idea), but I’m finding her prompts quite inspiring.

That was fun and linky. Maybe I will do it again.