A Quote by Michael Dirda
I don't think of myself as a critic at all. I'm a reviewer and essayist. I mainly hope to share with others my pleasure in the books and authors I write about, though sometimes I do need to cavil and point out shortcomings.
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Mainly, I try not to think about my readers as I write - I just think of my characters and myself - If they're interesting to me, my hope is that they'll be interesting to others as well.
I write songs as honestly as I can without worrying about genres or labels. Sometimes I sing, and sometimes I rap, and sometimes I do something in between. I jump around on stage and don't care too much about how I look. I try to be myself even though I'm still figuring myself out.
When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!
I think my favorite fact about myself is that I have never been dismayed by a critic's bilge or bile, and have never once in my life asked or thanked a reviewer for a review.
Authors have to write for their characters, for who they are, that's the strength of books. Don't worry about censors. Just write the story you need to tell and the rewards will come.
There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.
Hope is such a powerful thing. We all have hope for different things, but I think sometimes we need to share our hope with other people. We're sometimes in our own issues, and it isolates us, but when we come together and encourage each other and give a little bit of hope, it can, like it says in the song, go a long way.
I am a book reviewer. I write for a glossy magazine called 'SCI FI.' The money is not life-changing, but it's a low-stress gig. Publishers send me their books. More than I could possibly read. I pick a few and write about them, put a very few others on the shelf, to be perused at my leisure, someday.
There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to talk myself out of writing, sometimes for many years, and when I run out of arguments, I write.
I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer.
How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it's mostly about the reviewer!
I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary.
What I think of sometimes, as I read the new books - do kids really need to see such a seamy side of life? I'm in the minority, such an old woman, perhaps. I love the books that have given kids joy, that give them hope at the end. Sometimes it seems to me the books right now are very depressive.
I feel a kind of reverence for the first books of young authors. There is so much aspiration in them, so much audacious hope and trembling fear, so much of the heart's history, that all errors and shortcomings are for a while lost sight of in the amiable self assertion of youth.
All the authors who've ultimately published Louder Than Words memoirs have been very happy to be chosen and excited about the possibility of having their memoir published. Even though these books deal with serious, often painful, issues, in all cases the authors felt as though writing their story would be an empowering and healing experience.
I write my music to minister to myself. I have enough sin and enough shortcomings and enough need in my own life that I don't need to write to evangelize to the "masses." But if someone else can hear my music and relate to it with the same need that I do, then I give God the glory for that.
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