Today, I’m honored to be hosted by Therese Walsh and Kathleen Bolton on their fabulous site Writer Unboxed. Be sure to stop by their site to read my guest post “The 4 Pitfalls of Praise.”
What author doesn’t enjoy logging on to Amazon and finding a positive review or checking the inbox and receiving an email from a gushing fan? “I love your story”—four little words that spread grins across our faces, create warm little flutters in our stomachs, and tickle our feet into moon dancing around the room.
However, as wonderful as praise can be, we need to keep in mind a few of the pitfalls of praise, the warning signs that indicate we might be about to take a tumble, and the prescriptions for mending our wounds in the aftermath.
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About K.M. Weiland | @KMWeiland
Lol…. This is funny post but a reality. Humans tend to easily forget where their feet are placed in attempt to fly. This is human nature. And it can make us knock at the ground pretty badly too. All in all, it is a good reminder.
Writers are either down in the dumps, believing their stories are horrible, or off in the stratosphere flying high with unmitigated dreams of grandeur!
Know that feeling 😀
Well, at the very least, our lives are colorful and interesting, even enough to brag about.
An author once kvetched to me about a “bad” review. But what he thought was awful was the only expert review he’d received. It was 100% accurate and had probably taken well over an hour to write. The author had been led astray by a half dozen very kind novice readers, never checking to see how many stars they typically gave (5 in every case). He finally swallowed his pride and hired an editor to improve his work.
Making that jump from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence is tough but necessary–and ultimately very rewarding.