My Goodreads Confessional

On seeking validation, setting boundaries, what I'm writing next, and what I have to say about shame.

First a quick request: If you’ve read and enjoyed Keeping Pace, I’d be so grateful if you’d leave a review on Amazon to help others discover it! (You don’t have to buy it on Amazon to review it there, and as always, I encourage shopping at independent bookstores and bookshop.org when possible!) Leaving a review on Goodreads would also be wonderful and very helpful, though I definitely won’t read it–and you’ll find out why below…

Okay, now that that request is out of the way, I give you: my Goodreads confessional.

As you likely know, Goodreads is a site where readers can track, rate, and review books. Authors are often told to stay the heck off of Goodreads. I know a few people who enjoy checking out their books’ Goodreads reviews from time to time and come away with lovely and occasionally hilarious feedback, but those people must be less sensitive than I am, less likely to fixate, or both. 

The idea of checking Goodreads is tempting. Most of us authors are writing in part because we want our work to be read. We want our books to speak to people and entertain them and comfort them. We want to make readers think or laugh or cry or maybe all three of those things! It’s thrilling and validating to know when readers are really connecting with a story you’ve written. And sometimes you simply don’t know if that’s happening.

And yet, no book is for every reader, and these subjective reviews are meant for fellow readers, not for writers. Plus, for me personally, negative reviews hurt my feelings approximately ten times more than positive reviews encourage me, and it just isn’t worth putting myself in a position where I might get discouraged and have a hard time psyching myself up to write the next thing.

Still, for each of my five published books so far, there has come a point when I’ve caved in and checked Goodreads. With all my previous books, this happened pretty early on, when people were just starting to get advance reading copies. Each time, I went through a short period where I checked pretty often and cherished the lovely early reviews. But then, as soon as a moderately critical 3-star review popped up and hurt my feelings (through no fault of any reviewers, who are entitled to their own reading experiences and opinions that are really none of my business!), that was it. I remembered that the hurt-feelings-to-validation-ratio was skewed the wrong way and never checked the book’s Goodreads page again.

With Keeping Pace, I held out for longer. But eventually, a few people tagged me in Instagram posts that included screenshots of their Goodreads reviews, and the Goodreads reviews were just so nice! What if there were many more glowing Goodreads reviews waiting for me to read and feel validated by?? Or what if I was (mercifully) only getting tagged in the nice reviews, but lots of other people hated the book and tore it apart on Goodreads and I had no idea? Shouldn’t I know??

I could no longer resist, so I checked. 

And it isn’t as if Keeping Pace had tons of pre-publication reviews or anything. There were maybe thirty at that point, I think. Possibly fewer. But oh my goodness, they were wonderful! People I had no connection to were really getting this book! It was resonating in such a beautiful way! 

The problem was–and here comes the real “confessional” part–I got hooked on checking for more Goodreads reviews. I was checking every few days, then I was checking every day–then multiple times a day. I told myself this was okay. As soon as one review hurt my feelings, I’d stop–just like the other times…even though the other times I hadn’t checked quite this frequently.

Publication day came and went, and reviews kept trickling in. But there still weren’t any moderately critical reviews to sour me on checking (I’m SURE there are by now, but please don’t check and tell me!). The reviews were still (and again, small sample size here) so lovely! This felt like an intoxicating victory that maybe, possibly proved that this book could somehow manage to find its readers in a crowded and very challenging market. This felt like proof that my book might really matter!

A couple of times in those days just after publication–and this part is even more embarrassing–if a person left only a rating without a review, I clicked on their name to see what else they had been reading and rating lately so that I’d know if they gave everything four or five stars or if their four or five star rating meant they’d especially liked my book. 

And then one morning, I clicked on the name of a stranger who had just rated the book 4 stars, and I accidentally sent them a Goodreads friend request! I. was. MORTIFIED! I immediately canceled the friend request, deleted the Goodreads app off my phone, and have not looked at the site since, nor do I plan to. 

I was cured from my Goodreads fixation by my own embarrassing blunder, which was a huge relief. But the experience gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I do and don’t set limits for myself, and what truly motivates me to stop something I’d rather not be doing to begin with.

I’m struck by how easy it is for me to set a boundary as soon as something triggers my shame response–whether that’s accidentally friend-requesting a stranger on Goodreads, or even just reading a review that makes me feel like someone didn’t think a book I wrote was all that special or impactful. Rationally, that second thing shouldn’t make me feel ashamed, but deep down, it sometimes kind of does. 

In this case, shutting down my Goodreads habit was absolutely the right call. But when has shame caused me to shut myself off from something that might have been positive? And why can’t I seem to set boundaries without something that makes me feel inescapably, deep-in-my-gut bad about myself? 

This summer, in the midst of family time, travel, work on my school’s middle school library collection, and watching the Olympics, I’ve been working on a very ambitious new novel. It’s a mystery told in an innovative epistolary/multimedia format, and it’s about soccer (my favorite sport—finally!), and leadership, and female friendships. And also, at its core, it’s about shame.

A major part of the drafting process (in addition to figuring how to make the format work) is gradually figuring out how shame impacts each of the central characters and what it is I want to say about shame. It turns out I have a lot I want to say about shame. I’m doing a lot of thinking about the intersections of shame and perfectionism, shame and social media, shame and gender, and shame and sports, for starters. 

This whole book is a lot. I feel like I need many hours every day to crack this story, and I do not have many hours a day to dedicate to it. But I’m pushing through, and at this current stage, I’m having fun with it. I’ve puzzled out just enough about the mystery, themes, and characters that the drafting process is energizing, at least for now.

When I was a guest on Middle Grade Matters podcast this spring, the host, Shannon Balloon, asked me what advice I’d give to aspiring writers, and I said something about trying to write at the intersection of what you know (at least emotionally), what you love, and what you can see that the market might need. Someday maybe I’ll write a whole newsletter post about what I mean by that, because as a middle school teacher I see “the market” in a specific way.

But for now, I’ll just say that this project feels like it’s sitting right at that special spot where all three of those things overlap, and that’s giving me the determination to pull through a draft. Not before the end of summer, which had been my initial hope. But this isn’t a story I can rush, so I’m doing my best to stay patient (kind of like the U.S. Women’s soccer team playing against Japan’s low block, if you will). I’ll be excited to share more about it here as it evolves.

Fun Keeping Pace Updates!

Keeping Pace has been on some awesome summer reading lists, including The Book Mommy’s guide for tweens and young teens, Reading Middle Grade’s summer reading guide, and A Mighty Girl’s 100 picks for tweens (alongside Saint Ivy).

I’ve also done some interviews, including one with Publisher’s Weekly about being a writer/teacher, and I’ve written guest essays about how to write upper middle grade novels for middle school readers and why we need upper middle grade romance. Check out my website for more!

Books I’ve been loving:

Adult: Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy and It’s Elementary by Elise Bryant

Middle Grade: Make a Little Wave by Kerry O’Malley Cerra, Crushing It by Erin Becker, The Truth About Triangles by Michael Leali, Summer at Squee by Andrea Wang, and Maya and the Rising Dark by Rena Barron. I’ve also been accumulating lots more graphic novels for middle school readers at my school, and I’m especially excited about this one, which seems to fit that upper MG/young YA space that middle school readers crave.

What have you been reading and loving this summer?

Thanks for reading as always!

Love, Laurie