The musings of a Coffee Gent...

Okay, so today I was accused of being a crotchety old bitch, or words to that effect, for giving a book a two star review… Apparently, I don’t have a good word to say about books, puppies, kittens and just about anything. Yeah. You heard it right: I hate the world.

Boo shucks.

I’ve sat on this for most of the day, and for the most part, convinced myself to let it lie. But then there’s that little part of me that can’t possibly do that, because though the comment (which was pointed out to me by my brother of all people, but that’s another story…) was extremely naïve, and not to mention, totally ignorant, it got one thing spot on. I am an asshole, and a crotchety one at that.

You see, I have a right to an opinion, and though I’ve been guilty – as have most reviewers – in the past of not being balanced, of perhaps attacking an author rather than critiquing the book, that is not what happened here. Here I simply said the editing was crap, because it was. Apparently I say that a lot, but does this mean that I’m wrong? No. It means a lot of editing sucks. It means a lot of people throw books up on Amazon without paying for a professional edit and as such, their books, however great they might have been, turn out to be crap.

For pointing this out in a direct, concise manner, I will not apologize. Did I go through the book sentence by sentence and draw attention to its every flaw? To every clumsily applied dialogue tag, abused adverb, tense flip-flop and vomit of passive voice? No.

Do I want to now? Hell yeah.

Am I going to?

…

No. But I will say this: I’m not asking for perfection. In this mild rant alone I have used the word ‘crap’ a baziliion times. Were this post being scrutinized by a professional editor, they would no doubt insist I open my mind and find another adjective.

Writing is hard. I get it. I live with a journalist, and if I’m swamped at work too, the poor cat has to make do with licking the sticky remains of a long forgotten glass of merlot. And I get that editing is a drag. Boring. Frustrating. Lonely.

But. It. Needs. To. Be. Done. And if you don’t do it, I have every right to say so.

Loudly