Shannon Stacey


Retro Shan: Negative Reviews

(I’m still crazy busy, so here’s a repeat from 3/29/07—a Thursday Thirteen list I did on dealing with rejection. Number five was, and still is, just a joke.)

Thirteen things you can do with a printed copy of a negative review:

1. Set it on fire in the driveway. (An obvious one, yes, but a method I’ve used on crappy drafts in the past. I have stopped doing that, but only because the Mustang has a slow gas leak. Wouldn’t that suck?)

2. Fold it into a paper airplane, launch it, then shoot it down with a BB-gun.

3. Shred it and use it to mulch your garden. Give it a few days, then douse those freakin’ too-cheery blossoms with Roundup.

4. Send it to the Feds as proof there is a conspiracy of mean girls out to get you.

5. Finely shred, mix with canned dog food, feed it to a puppy and then kick the puppy.

6. Crinkle it into a tight ball, sprinkle Comet on it and use it to scour under the rim of your toilet bowl.

7. Make a Mad Lib out of it and play with a friend. Instead of “The heroine was stupid, the hero had no motivation, and the author needs to learn craft” you could have “The heroine was smelly, the hero had no elbows, and the author needs to learn the Macarena“. Much better, no?

8. Finely chop and mix with shredded coconut, then dip in chocolate. Send high-fiber faux-Mounds to reviewer with a very polite “Thank you for taking the time to…” note.

9. Place review in paper feeder, sit on copy machine deck and superimpose your ass over her words. (I recommend not trying this at Staples, though. They’re ridiculously uptight about ass prints on the glass.)

10. Send it to Stayfree to use in their rate-of-absorption blotting tests.

11. Fold it into a lovely and graceful Origami swan, and then step on its little head.

12. (TTs start getting hard around #7, and #12’s a bitch, ain’t it?) Umm…Be really original and line your litter box with it?

13. Learn from it. Unless the reviewer has some whacked personal vendetta against you, chances are she didn’t pull those comments out of her ass just to piss you off.

6 comments to “Retro Shan: Negative Reviews”

  1. Patti
    Comment
    1
      · November 5th, 2009 at 9:41 pm · Link

    You are so funny and entertaining…I’m glad I stopped by!



  2. Patti
    Comment
    2
      · November 5th, 2009 at 9:42 pm · Link

    I can do so much while procrastinating…



  3. Jewell
    Comment
    3
      · November 9th, 2009 at 11:59 am · Link

    Yoohoo, Shannon

    Have you seen the news about HQ’s new ebook line? And the head editor?



  4. Shannon
    Comment
    4
      · November 9th, 2009 at 12:06 pm · Link

    Yup! Very exciting!



  5. Heather Rae Scott
    Comment
    5
      · November 9th, 2009 at 10:07 pm · Link

    ;-) don’t you have some news to share?



  6. Jewell
    Comment
    6
      · November 10th, 2009 at 9:46 am · Link

    Oh, Heather, what a tease.

    C’mon, Shannon, dish!







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