The First Review

I suppose the journey that an aspiring author undertakes is marked by various milestones. I know that some are moments of accomplishment, like the feeling when you’ve just typed out the last sentence of a story, or when you have finally finished another edit. I would imagine some of these milestones are inevitable yet undesirable, the first rejection letter for example.

Some of these way-points I would speculate are passed by all aspiring authors, but there will be some that, despite our best efforts, we struggle towards but never achieve. After all, trying to make headway with writing sometimes feels like trying to be heard in a noisy room.

One of these moments must be the first review. In this case I’m talking about a customer review, a relatively minor thing in the grand scheme of things but it is important nonetheless. Last week I was notified of the first review posted on the Colossus Smashwords page. When I clicked the link and waited the few seconds it took for the page to load it was a moment of apprehension. I had received feedback from friends and family when writing Colossus, but of course such feedback is not without its bias. This was the first response from a stranger, someone who lacks such bias. In those moments I didn’t know whether or not this person had even liked the story. I don’t think I will ever know if what I write is “good” or “bad”, of course such a thing is entirely subjective and there is no absolutely definitive answer. But this was the first data point on the issue.

In those moments I reminded myself that, regardless of what this review said, I wrote Colossus for the same reason I write anything: Because I enjoy the act of writing. I self-published it because I felt it was better out there in the world than sitting on my computer gathering proverbial dust. If one person enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, then going to the trouble of formatting and uploading would have been worth it.

As you should see from the Smashwords page, the review was positive. As much as I am trying to stop that fact going to my head, the feeling I had when I read that review was not far short of elation. It is, so far, the happiest I have been with regards to my writing since I’ve started out. Even though I’ve not been published, it’s the first moment where I’ve genuinely felt like an author rather than a writer. I hope more people read Colossus, and I hope they post reviews and feedback. I’d love to know what people like, and just as importantly what they don’t like. Where I can focus my efforts and improve, so that the next story I publish is better.

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