The critics don't scare me - much

One of the downsides of following links on Twitter is that I sometimes read reviews which I'm eternally grateful aren't aimed at me.  What is it about these people that they think they can get all pretentious about a writer's work and pronounce on it in unintelligible terms?  I've read reviews of books that I've  also read, and wondered if we've seen the same text.  

So many reviewers seem to use the text they're commenting on as a springboard for their own obsessions.  One I've become very aware of recently is the call for diversity in stories.  Many critics are pulling apart stories because they don't have people of colour in them, or they don't have gay or lesbian relationships in them.  They're keeping score of the diversity instead of evaluating the story.

Yes, they do have a valid point that the universe will be as diverse as little of' planet Earth is, but sometimes these critics use their politics to browbeat authors.  Because here's the thing: I'm a storyteller.  I'm not a political activist.  Yes, my books will contain comments on situations I don't like, but my interests are big cat conservation and ecology, not the diversity of humans.

I've also sometimes read reviews about an author's writing style which have left me scratching my head and wondering whether I've learnt anything about my craft in forty years.  The critic sometimes picks up some very obscure point about the text and flogs it to death.

Never respond to a critic, we're told. It's just one opinion.  Which is fine, until that one person is a reviewer for a major magazine or newspaper.  Them they have considerable power.  It's not a critic's words that would ever scare me, but their reach.  The number of minds potentially changed by a damaging review in a major newspaper could be great.  And the impact on the author's sales.

It matters because an awful lot of critics are what Julia Cameron calls Shadow Artists, blocked writers themselves.  And instead of claiming their own writing talents they spend their time taking apart the writing of those who do use their talent.  Instead of getting started on their own great novels, they take apart the novels of those who have got on with the work.  That's what scares me about critics.  Not their words, but the subtext behind their words.