Eliot's Note to the Reviewer

Note from the Captain of the Authorship: The following is taken directly from my printed manuscript for the book Grumble. I have placed in braces, that these thingies { }, around additions or adaptations to the original request for this new medium.

While this work {and some of my other work have} has been published online, {looking to} it {and the other literary efforts, each one} is also a work in progress. Thanks to the nature of online media, your critiques and praises can be read, reviewed, applied, and submitted within a short period of time. Also, I hope to gather a list of willing reviewers to get an advance look at Jumble {and other efforts in Authorship including the in-need-of-being-republished Grumble} to speed the evolution of the work prior to publication.

For the purposes of this publication, let's start with four important qualifiers and what they will mean for the review process:

• Great: Do not change a thing
• Good: May need just a little tweaking
• Bad: Needs rewritten or replaced
• Ugly: Remove, discard, or destroy it

I do have three additional ideas to consider when reading the work itself:

• Editorial: Changes in spelling, grammar, font, or punctuation. Ex.: Use "passed" instead of "past", wrong tense in the sentence, is that really supposed to be italicized?
• Thorough: If there is a problem with the flow, description, character development, or other aspect of the writing, please be detailed in your description of the problem.
• Specific: Provide the page number, quote the original line that has the issue, and then describe the issue Ex.: Page 83, "The third piece of information", the phrase introduces the second piece of information, not the third

I would like to emphasize specificity with two examples from my teaching experience that I hope will encourage you towards that end. First, the bad: "Eliot is one of the worst teachers I have ever had." While I feel for this person, having spent money to receive a poor educational experience, I have no way of improving my teaching based on this information because I don't know what he feels I did wrong, what I did right, what I could improve upon, and what is a definite strength. While I did ponder my interactions with this particular student, I could not think of anything I could change because I had nothing to compare and contrast my memories with his review. Second, the humorous: "Eliot is the Superhero of Teachers. Standing between the Evil administration that has laid down their Evil laws to subjugate we the students." He continues in this vein for another eight sentences. This statement even included a picture of a person, that I assume to be me, dressed like Superman with an ST on the chest and one foot resting on what I presume to be a vanquished foe. Even with this delightfully inventive review, I again was faced with the fact that I had no take-away to use to improve my teaching. I was grateful that he felt I had been supportive.

With these qualifiers and ideas in mind, please take some time to review my literary effort. Please provide the page numbers {or date of blog entry} for exact critiques. I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

Thank you for your time, concern, and consideration,

grumblelives@gmail.com
http://grumblelives.blogspot.com/

P.S.:
I don't know if an author's note is allowed to have a post script, but, hey, here's one anyway.

I would like to provide you, the kind, gentle reviewer, and you, the thorough, harsh reviewer, with a quote:

How do you find out if you’re a good enough writer?

Don’t ask your family or friends. They mean well, but while you may have fantasies of your big future success as a rich and famous author, so do your friends because of how it reflects them. Have you ever spoken to someone who was doing something like acting or singing and thought about what it would be like if they were famous and you could say you knew them?

Well, the second "hey I wrote this book" comes out of your mouth, if they show any real enthusiasm, that’s likely what they’re thinking. They want to be proud of you and say they know you, which is all very flattering. But before your first book goes into the world isn’t the time to be doing something silly like over-inflating your ego. Egos are like tires; you really can put too much air in them.

The other option is that they will read it, hate it, and not tell you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings or the personal relationship you share.

A few will give you some good, honest feedback, but they’ll still hold back because of not wanting to overburden you with too much nitpicking. What they don’t understand is that every grammatical or typographical problem, every story error, every clunky paragraph will be noticed by a reader. And if that reader had to pay money for it, they’ll be upset.

No book is perfect, but before you put it out there, you should make a solid effort to make sure it’s the very best it can be.

Winters, Zoe (2010-11-05). Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author (Kindle Locations 211-223). IncuBooks. Kindle Edition. (emphasis added)

I personally believe that there is more than a few of my friends and family that are very much capable of assisting me in making this literary effort the "very best it can be." I look to you, the honest, caring reviewer to prove me right.

Thank you for your honest, thorough effort to bless my writing and my family,

grumblelives@gmail.com
http://grumblelives.blogspot.com/

Review Version: Tuesday, 12 June 2012