LUCY BURDETTE: Laura Hankin's books are perfect summer reading, so if you haven't read her yet, you're in for a treat! Welcome Laura!
LAURA HANKIN: I still remember the first one-star review I ever received. It happened almost a decade ago. Back then, I hadn’t yet learned that Goodreads isn’t a particularly healthy place for authors to hang out, so I spent far too much time lurking on the page for my debut novel. With each complimentary review that rolled in, I let myself believe that, despite the book’s small printing and the lack of media attention it had received, I was at the start of a long and healthy career, my talent undeniable!
And then a big, bright one-star review popped up, calling the book “stunningly boring and pedestrian,” plunging me into self-doubt and somehow making me forget every compliment I'd gotten.
It’s amazing how long criticism can stay with us, isn’t it? Why is it so easy to push aside the nice things that people have told you in favor of the mean ones? I’ve received countless five-star reviews in the years since, and yet this is still the only one I can recite word-for-word.
I even made a music video about it for the release of my new book, and some author friends joined in for cameos, because it turns out that we all have a… special attachment to our one-star reviews.
I think sometimes we assume that the people who criticize us are the only ones telling us the truth. Socially, it’s so much easier to make nice. So if someone bothers to criticize us, it must really mean something, right? But the thing is, a critique is only one person’s truth. A gushing compliment might be somebody else’s. Everyone has different taste, different things that bother them, different things they love. So if you try to please every single person, you’ll never do a thing.
Over the years, I’ve found people I trust to give me constructive feedback on my writing — friends, my editor, my agent — and I let their critiques push me to be better. Of course, sometimes it’s difficult to ignore the other critics, like the time I had to walk down the aisle at my friend’s wedding with a man who’d given my book a one-star rating on Goodreads. (We were the maid of honor and best man, so there was no avoiding each other.) But even that criticism turned out to be an unexpected gift. It provided me for the perfect setup for my new novel, ONE-STAR ROMANCE.
How do you deal with criticism? Do you tend to hold onto it, or are you able to let it go pretty easily? And have you ever found criticism to be a good thing?
About ONE-STAR ROMANCE: A struggling writer is forced to walk down the aisle at her best friend's wedding with a man who gave her novel a one-star review in this fresh, emotional romantic comedy. Though this maid of honor and best man would prefer to never see each other again after the reception ends, they're forced together over the course of a decade each time their best friends celebrate a new life milestone. Through housewarmings and christenings, triumphs and tragedies, these two grapple with their own life choices, their changing friendships, and whether your harshest critic can become your perfect match.
Author bio: Laura Hankin is the author of Happy & You Know It, A Special Place for Women, and The Daydreams. Her musical comedy has been featured in publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and she is developing projects for film and TV. She lives in Washington DC, where she once fell off a treadmill twice in one day.
