Okay, then. The truth: internet reviews and ratings are a major part of the “word of mouth” book buzz readers once found via publication reviews and libraries. They give bookstores, editors, and potential readers an idea of how well a book is being received by the public, often influencing sales and promotion attempts.

You’ve just finished reading a novel. (For the sake of random and totally unbiased argument, let’s say it’s one of mine.) You

1. love, love, love it;

2. can’t imagine how anyone on Earth could love, love, love it;

3. think the author needs serious help.

You want to review this book online because

1. everyone should read it – it’s THAT good;

2. nobody should read it – no person’s karma can be THAT bad;

3. the author needs serious help.

There’s no doubt that customer reviews are influential. But if I had a chance to review the reviews, I’d say that some are better than others, and it has little to do with whether or not the reviewer liked the book.

Here’s my subjective list of a few approaches to avoid when writing an online review:

“This book was boring.” Details, please. Which aspect of this book didn’t interest you? Sometimes the type of book one reader finds dull is exactly the sort another reader enjoys.

“I liked the story, but I gave the book one star because it is morally offensive.” Different issues offend different readers. It’s helpful to be honest about your own sensibilities right up front: “This book made me uncomfortable because I believe that dabbling in the supernatural is blasphemous.” (Yes, that criticism has been applied to my books.) In a world where low ratings can hurt sales, please don’t give a competent novel an overall poor review on the sole basis that parts of it didn’t jibe with your personal beliefs.

“I liked this book right up until (MAJOR PLOT REVEAL THAT MAKES IT UNNECESSARY TO READ THE BOOK).” Please. I’m crying, here. Please, please don’t give away plot twists that took authors hours and hours to create, plot twists we hoped would raise the story to the next level, plot twists that … please, don’t.

“The characters in this book were written by someone with an emotional IQ of three.” Try to remember that a real person wrote this book. Don’t be mean. In a related vein, please don’t sacrifice kindness in an attempt to be funny. Okay, maybe the author DOES have an emotional IQ of three, but can you think of a more constructive way to get your point across, something less personal and more related to the story itself?

“This book was just a beach read, not worth my time.” Try to remember that the review is about the book, not how erudite the reader is. Some readers LIKE beach reads.

So, what’s a reviewer to do? Glad you asked.

In my opinion, the best – and most credible – reviews allow readers to draw their own conclusions about whether or not they might like a particular book. The reviewer does this by focusing on the book itself: did the plot keep you turning pages? Were the characters interesting? If something didn’t work for you in the story, why didn’t it? Would this novel maybe appeal to a certain kind of reader? Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

It’s interesting to note that positive reviews can come with their own pitfalls. There are readers who doubt the validity of every five-star review, suspecting that they’ve been written by relatives of the author, friends, or scam pay-for-positive-reviews services (oh, yes there are). Those readers prefer to choose their books based on information gleaned from bad reviews, figuring that at least those comments are honest. And, as mentioned earlier, one person’s poison can be another’s feast.

P.S. This essay is a revision of one I wrote many years ago, before my novel Newport was published…and before it received a one-star review because Kindle didn’t download properly. (It made me laugh, but in a dark, desperate sort of way.)

So, remember: however you feel about that book you plan to review, the power is yours …wield it wisely!

And keep reading!

That’s what it’s called. Christmas creep. That’s when Christmas decorations and merchandise start appearing on retail shelves in early dribs and drabs. You may be buying Halloween candy when you hear your first Christmas carol of the year.

This isn’t a surprise. Commercial Christmas prep sped up years ago. For most merchants, the winter holiday season provides a major hunk of annual sales, so why not begin the spending reminders early? That’s especially true of a year like this one, where Thanksgiving falls late enough to leave only about four shopping weeks before Christmas. I could be irritated (Crass Commercialism!!!), but the fact is, I don’t really care. In fact, I kind of like it.

I’m not alone. Studies show that experiencing early decorations for the winter holidays spikes dopamine, the “reward” hormone that makes us feel good. The sparkling lights and colorful displays, the music we hear only seasonally … all of this helps us feel better than we did before. It makes sense that the early-decorating trend would spread beyond retail to homes.

Winter holidays bring the promise of light in the darkness, no matter what the odds. In a world filled with anxiety and sadness, that can lift beyond dopamine. Hope is the ultimate hygge.

This doesn’t explain the intensification of Halloween.

Halloween candy started hitting the shelves in mid-August, which is also when Spirit Halloween stores start popping up in retail spaces with nothing else to do. As with Christmas, early Halloween prep has seeped into non-commercial settings as well. I passed my first Halloween-decorated home about two weeks ago. (I’m not including my neighborhood giant skeleton, which stays up all year round and fulfills the apparently recent requirement that every neighborhood have one.)

Last year, there was more decorating for Halloween in my neighborhood than I could remember ever seeing before. I’m not talking charming, feel-good, “Welcome, Fall” stuff. I’m not even talking Mysterious Gothic. I’m talking blood, guts, and more fear than should ever fit into one yard. (Full disclosure: my “Scary Meter” doesn’t rise above those little floaty ghosts made from tissues and attached to tree branches.)

So, why do we do THAT thing? It seems so anti-hygge.

Our senses are heightened when we’re afraid and, once again, our brain releases dopamine. The key is knowing that no matter how scared (or grossed out) we may feel, we are safe. Deep inside, we know that after the scary experience ends, we will be fundamentally okay.

I’m guessing that unlike real life, the chemical rush of all that blood and gore puts us in a situation we believe we can actually control.

Maybe we start decorating early because we want to absorb every possible high from a time of year that lifts us out of the ordinary and into something magical. After all, the holidays themselves pass quickly. It doesn’t take long after Halloween for us to mentally finish with fall and jump into winter celebrations. As for Christmas, by the time New Year’s Day rolls around, most of us wish those same decorations that brought so much joy would just pack themselves away so that we can move on to organizing for the new year.

But that’s okay. At that point, the beginning creep of the next holiday season is only seven months away.

Those plastic tubs are where the problem lies.

I’ve written before about my major concern with my journals: what happens to them when I’m no longer available to explain, defend, discuss the entries? What happens if someone reads a section that not only makes them feel less than they are, but doesn’t represent how I truly felt about them? After all, my journal entries are not erudite reflections on the world around me. They’re more like workbooks, gathering my scattered thoughts and helping me reel them in. They can read pretty rough.

Because one concern is never enough, lately I’ve developed an additional one. Never mind what I’ve written in those volumes; what about the stuff I haven’t written? I’ve shared pivotal experiences and important conversations with people who matter deeply to me, yet didn’t record them in my journal. Could that make it seem like what happened between us didn’t matter, that it had no impact at all?

There are reasons why some significant events don’t show up in my journal pages, and none of those reasons have anything to do with not making a cut. Sometimes, a situation is too important or profound for words to do it justice. That may sound odd, given that I’m a writer. But I have great respect for both the depth of words and the reach of action, and some events feel too multidimensional to be confined by only two. Reflecting them accurately on paper requires time and space, and I don’t always have enough of either.

Sometimes, something that happens hurts too much. I need time for the fabric of my life to rearrange before I can write about the hit, because committing it to paper makes it “real.” This means an event can be long past by the time I get to it, the emotion of it diluted to a point where I can handle it.

I won’t lie: the weight of what to do with these journals has exercised a tiny bit of a chilling effect on what I write. There are thoughts I don’t want to commit to paper … which would seem to negate the point of a journal altogether. But journaling still works for me. My journal remains a place to process emotions that have nowhere else to go. My little part of the universe is probably a safer place because I keep a journal. I’m just more aware these days of causing future hurt.

I used to joke that I would reread each of my journals at the end of my life, burning or keeping pages as I went along. Back then, that day felt far enough away that I could smile at the image.

I’m not smiling anymore.

Whatever I decide to do with that mountain of journals, I hope they’re merely a footnote in the way people remember me. The absence of complete documentation only proves that I was too busy actually living to take the time to write everything down. I was fully present: loving, absorbing, being there. The journals aren’t an unabridged autobiography – they’re just the scrap paper that helped me show up for the real thing.

I get that. Change can feel catastrophic, even if it’s something we’ve always dreamed about. It often feels like a door slams behind us long before we’re ready to leave the building.

Sometimes I miss parts of my life so intensely that they’re almost tangible. But the past I long for is illusory. I forget that those times I miss so much often felt as uncertain and messy as the present can feel right now. Even if I could re-insert myself into the past, I’m not the same person I was back then, and I wouldn’t react to situations in the same way.

Clinging to the past is grasping at a vapor.

Much of my longing isn’t for the times themselves but for what they represent. I miss my children’s childhoods, but I don’t need to go back to actively raising them. What I really miss is the ability to protect them, nurture them, watch them absorb new experiences and knowledge. I miss the mom friends I had back in those days, watching their children grow alongside mine. When I miss practicing law, it doesn’t mean I want to dive back into the intensity of that world–it’s missing a sense of accomplishment and purpose, using my mind in a very specific way. And missing my band days? No, I don’t want to sing in a band anymore. I just miss who I was back then, the rush of being onstage, the chance to craft a song.

I appreciate the opportunity to time-travel through my memories. Distance provides insight. Revisiting the past helps me understand more than I did the first time I passed through.

Maybe this is what I’d tell my mom, who cried long after she moved into the new house she eventually came to love: change doesn’t move us forward in a straight line–it’s multidimensional. Everything we’ve experienced stays with us. When I loosen my grip on a past event itself, memory gives me new ways to understand who I was then and am now.

And this can lead to some really wonderful places.

I have a manuscript box like that. Stashed in a dark part of the basement, it’s filled with stories that, through no fault of their own, just … well … stink. Yeah, I wrote them. At one time, I even thought they were good.

Fortunately, we all get a chance to evolve.

Looking at my earlier drafts (as if I’d ever let you), it’s clear my writing has been character-driven from the start — especially if you consider character sufficiently developed when he/she can be summed up in a word or two, as in “the sassy one”; “the troubled one”; “the one who surprises even herself.” (My earlier work is more accessible if you like stereotypes.)

You always knew exactly how my characters were feeling, because the adverbs attached to the dialogue tags told you. Readers were subjected to a lot of stuff like “she said questioningly,” and “he said evocatively.” If it still wasn’t obvious enough, there were many different ways to “say” things. Characters purred, chirped, and grunted. It was a regular zoo in each chapter. And, to make sure there was no doubt whatsoever, sometimes the dialogue tags were double-barreled, a fun reading experience for everyone: “she whimpered miserably,” “he snarled angrily,” “she commented pertly.” Dialogue tags, meant to be unobtrusive, were prominent enough to become their very own characters.

Plots were linear. Sure, there were stories to tell, but they lacked depth. Sometimes there was no hook, no compelling reason for anyone to want to turn the page to discover what happened next. Basically, I was writing for myself. Self-indulgent? You bet! Awful? Right again. And, yet, those stories have a special place in my heart. Those characters and I were friends.

There are some manuscripts a writer puts away knowing that they’ll be back. The plot, although in need of editing, is compelling enough to revisit. The characters have something to say. When the time is right, that manuscript will be revisited and edited into something sharp and readable.

The manuscripts in the box downstairs are not those stories. There’s a reason they live deep in the basement, out of sight.

If I remember my Rudoph correctly, the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys are eventually picked up by Santa and delivered to children who will appreciate them. While nothing quite as heartwarming happens on the Island of Misfit Manuscripts, those early drafts do serve a purpose. Every once in a while, almost by mistake, I wrote a description or phrase back then that was actually good. There was effective use of imagery. There was a character who didn’t inspire cringing and/or eye-rolls. Like old cars that have outlasted their use, these old manuscripts can be mined for “parts” to use in newer stories.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling frustrated with my current manuscript, I re-read one of my oldies-but-baddies. It never fails to make me feel better.

(This post was originally published on Sept. 15, 2015.)