Should an author read reviews? Here's what Anne has to say.

Anne here on authors reading reviews.

If reading reviews hurts you as a writer, then don't do it. Nobody says you have to read reviews and there are plenty of good reasons not to do anything that hurts you. Reviews are written for other readers, not for writers anyway. Myself I do read any and every review at least once.

You can't control what you "believe." A good review, a negative review, any review might ring a bell with you, teach you something, inspire you in some way. Or you can be blocked by what you read in a review. Again, you cannot control what you "believe," or what you feel.

But you are in control of your work; and your obligation, as I see it, is to write the best book that you can write according to your standards. That's what I think my readers want of me. They want me to be true to my own judgment, my own passion, my own voice. And do the best I can.

Yes, different readers will have different reactions. That's a given, especially today with 360 degree internet exposure for a book. Authors have to live with this. But you must forge ahead with courage and respect for your own passion.

I'm honored that Lestat is so real to people that they fight with me about what he would do or say on occasion. That's a wonderful thing, to have it confirmed that your character is real for people. That doesn't mean I'm not hurt when some people slam me for the choices that Lestat makes or that I make with him. Of course I'm hurt. But I keep right on going.

Again, there is no winning a perfectly happy audience. If you think there is, choose any book you positively loved by George R.R. Martin or Stephen King and read the negative reviews of that book on Amazon. 

The creation of a fictional world requires courage, stubbornness, a great quiet faith in oneself, and a ruthless on the part of the writer to protect herself from what is harmful. And again, reviews aren't written for us; they're written for other readers. We may bristle at the seeming "unfairness" of a review; but we must move on from that. 

When you do want critical feedback on your work, choose teachers or critics whom you trust for specific reasons. It is your right to be very careful in this regard. Protecting your talent and your morale are your responsibility.

The outcasts of the literary world

Anne on vampires; they are the most powerful metaphor for the outsider I ever encountered. I, a woman with no clear gender identity, strong erotic drives, great ambition, and a fractured cultural background, felt "normal" when I wrote about vampires --- intelligent outcasts who refused to accept the world's contempt as their story. I didn't inject philosophy into my vampire novels; it was just there; Lestat, Louis, Claudia, Armand...they were living breathing allegories, all crying for the right to live, to have a place in the universe. If you give all you have to your writing, if you tell all you know in every novel, you can't escape the deeper philosophical questions, meanings, possibilities.

When I came of age, nobody thought "a vampire novel" was worth that kind of commitment and depth. Genre fiction was presumed to be shallow. Same with the historical novel. I saw "Feast of All Saints" panned because it wasn't a simplistic melodrama. Nobody even knew how to classify "Cry to Heaven." But I kept giving all I had to my strange books, ignoring the denigrating labels and frankly getting downright angry about them.

Today, you don't hear those complaints so much. Seems the whole world knows you can learn a great deal about "everything" from a good episode of "Game of Thrones" and that there are profound truths in "Gone Girl." Daniel Silva packs his beautiful spy novels with deep moral concerns. Any type of novel can be a great novel. ------- What a wonderful thing to have lived long enough to see the power of labels broken, the "rules" of genre thrown to the winds, the bias of high culture ignored or stood on its head.

Of course the science fiction readers always knew these truths. In the 50's they were looking to their great writers for poetry, heart wrenching reflection on alienation --- the use of plot and setting for lofty and undeniable truths. I love being a novelist. ----------- I love being the producer, director, set designer and star of my weird, unclassifiable stories. I've grown to love being laughed at, sneered at, ridiculed, questioned as to how I, of all people, dare to write about Jesus! And you know why I love it? Because I've been lucky enough to have many, many readers over the years, readers who give each new book a chance, readers who say simply that they enjoy my books, readers who quietly "get it," wonderful readers from all walks of life --- They are priceless to me, and they are my real critics, reviewers, judges, etc. I long ago left it up to them to decide whether I was any good, or just a crackpot or a trash writer. And I just go on writing about vampires, witches, telepaths, ghosts, angels, werewolves, and yes, even Jesus --- for them and for me.

Writing for the "marketplace"

Anne on writing.

One thing I believed early on: readers have a right to pure enjoyment. If you won't give them plot, spectacle, suspense, some glamour, then don't complain if they don't want to read your work.

I found myself amongst disillusioned academic writers who felt they were "better" than those topping the bestseller lists, alienated from a public who didn't appreciate their fine small realistic psychological novels about upper middle class life and its endless small frustrations. I never had much sympathy with all that. Yes, there were crude writers atop the bestseller lists but when you took the time to read bestselling novels, you could see the skill, the passion, the relentless storytelling, the appeal.

I figured I could offer spectacle, plot, suspense and glamour -- the things I loved -- and still write a novel with depth. I took Aristotle's reflections on successful tragedy to heart; I wanted my work to have heroes, real heroes, and plenty of spectacle and plot, fine writing (the finest I could do) and to arouse pity and fear and produce catharsis.

I saw a total absence of these elements in the "better" serious fiction of America, the pedestrian realism anointed as the national literature with its "ordinary" folk in inevitable situations, striving for small insights. Understand, there was much great writing in these "better" serious "realistic" novels. But I wanted wider appeal. I have some deep constitutional aversion to elites. Yes, they may be the custodians of artistic values, but I admire and desire the art that moves "the people." After all, I am "the people." I love Elvis and Maria Callas; Jackie Susann and Charles Dickens; "Splendor in the Grass" with Natalie Wood and Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet. I read literary criticism and comic books. I crave poetry and night time soaps. I wanted my books in student backpacks and on kitchen shelves in trailers and other homes, in libraries and in drugstores. I was actually terrified of small, limited, respectable success. So I wrote big bizarre and unwieldy books in which vampires or witches talked of "souls" or "eternity."

Well, it paid off for me with the audience I love and respect and identify with. So my advice to other writers will always be: do what you want, do what you love, write the books you want to read. Never study or reflect on "the marketplace" and try to craft a fiction to meet its demands. And if you want to write for literary critics, good luck with that. I know nothing about it.

The true secret to becoming a bestseller

Anne on writing:

It's an open secret in the book world that nobody knows what makes a bestseller. Nobody has a clue. And that's good. Writing is the most democratic of all creative fields, providing room for Franz Kafka and Fifty Shades of Grey.

Any writer who sets out to imitate bestsellers is missing the point. What makes the top of the bestseller list over and over again is complete unanticipated originality. If publishers knew what would succeed they wouldn't need us. They don't know. And usually when some surprising book comes out of nowhere to sell millions, there's a list behind it of agents and editors who turned it down thinking it didn't have a chance.

All this is great -- great for the individual writer out there struggling to mine her own obsessions, visions, dreamworlds, for the story that feels inevitable, no matter how peculiar.

Now and then a publisher foresees a greatness in a manuscript and is correct, as in the story of Gone with the Wind. But for every score like that, publishers can tell you about their abysmal failures. Again, this is all good, good for the guy in the garage office or the woman typing away on her laptop on the kitchen table -- for every writer with no inside connections, or clues as to how to "succeed" who just goes on writing.

Teacher Anne?

Anne on writing:

When I was preparing to go to college and major in journalism, with dreams of being a writer, an aunt advised me to major in elementary education, to revise my dreams, and to go for a practical job as a schoolteacher. She emphasized among other things that exceptional people, geniuses, etc., were not happy. She thought my dreams even of being a newspaper reporter were fantasy.

Decades later, that aunt was a regular at my book signings in her area. She'd appear with piles of my novels to be personalized for friends and other relatives. I was always glad to see her. I liked her. I never reminded her of that moment, the moment she advised me to shelve my dreams. It would have been unkind to do that. But I never forgot that moment either. She was a lovely and generous lady. She meant well.

But I meant well too when I completely ignored her proposal for my life, and went my own way to become a writer. (By the way, I have nothing but admiration for school teachers; I think they are undervalued and underpaid. And we need them desperately. But it wasn't the life for me. I would have been bad at it.)