my first 1-star review

This was simply too good not to share.

First off, don't worry about me—my ego isn't hurt. Although it sounds odd to say it, I'm genuinely thankful to have gotten a 1 star review for my anthology, and I'll explain why in a moment.

the review

if I may...

I can't lie—Lucy has me dead to rights about my Introduction. It's super long and waffles on about the importance of the public domain. Mea culpa.

Then again, the Introduction articulates the entire point of the book, thereby setting the tone for why I wrote 108 stories only to rescind my legal rights to sue anyone for copying them. Nobody has to read the introduction, and most people won't anyway. But if someone does, they may be inspired to create something (a story, a movie, a song, a game... whatever) for the public domain, which means everyone benefits. Seems like a risk worth taking.

As for the length of my stories, Amazon's blurb says right there at the top:

these short stories are a demonstration of the power of the public domain and a testament to the genre of sudden fiction literature.

Since each story is 600 words on average, you can read one before your coffee finishes brewing, but still be left with a thoughtful—and sometimes amusing—glimpse into someone else's life.

Apart from saying "these are more vignettes than stories," I'm not sure how much more clear I could have been. These stories act more like "stubs", i.e., small roots from which others may take inspiration to plant their own garden.

I wrote these stories to encourage others plant with them.

So yeah, calling them short stories might have oversold it? I guess? Maybe?

the upside of bad feedback

Have said all that, I am oddly thankful to have gotten this bad review. This was a relatively considerate bad review, at that. I can't really throw shade on someone for being honest. If they didn't like my work, fair enough. Not everyone likes everything.

There's another important angle to this, however. As much as I love all my friends stepping forward to give me (unsolicited) five star reviews, at some point down the line I know someone will eventually sully that perfect record. No book out there has 5/5 stars. If it does, my B.S. detector starts going haywire. That's why a 1 star review actually helps me see there is nuance in the world, as I would have hoped. (I am surprised they thought it was so bad that it garnered a 1 star—I myself would only reserve a 1 star for a book that has laughably poor layout, typos strewn about like a toddler's legos, or anything that demonstrates the author simply wasn't trying. A two star review feels appropriate here, but a 1 star seems a little overkill.)

This one bad review is also a good reminder of the importance of mental resiliance. Artists need to live in that invincible mental space where critiques have zero effect. Artists should be able to walk into a room of their worst critics and just smile with genuine appreciation that their critics thought enough of their work to leave a comment at all.

Because the opposite of love isn't hate. Hate demonstrates you care enough about something to engage with it, even if it's negative. The true opposite of love is apathy; if someone reads a book and never thinks about it again, that's mission failure, in my book. That's an artist not doing their job.

To paraphrase Tchaikovsky, artists roam this planet to jump on your chest, ram an ice pick into your heart, pry it open, and force you to pay attention to that catharctic chaos.

Artists exist to make you feel something... even it's only a 1 star review.