Review Blocked
We hear about writers getting writer’s block all the time. That internal psychological menace that keeps the words from flowing. Sometimes it’s a plot that isn’t gelling. Or a character who is stubbornly silent on who they really are or what they really want. Part of what I do as an editor is author coaching, helping authors work through those blocks to find the words needed to restart the flow. Sometimes it’s as easy as talking it through. Other times, it’s more complex, requiring rewrites or scrapping an entire plotline, or character.
Another part of my job is word fluffing. If you’re not familiar with that term, apparently it’s what I do. At least according to one of my besties (Julie) who jokingly called me her fluffer when I helped her with some words years ago. And yeah, we added ‘word’ to that term and it has become a thing. I fluff blurbs, books, posts, all things words. It’s a fun little piece of my job that lets me enhance what’s already written into what the writer envisioned but needed some assistance attaining.
And sometimes I even use my own words, fluffing them into reviews that help me express how much a book has impacted me. Sharing my joy of the books I love. And yeah, my reviews tend to be long and wordy and sometimes expansive in scope and language. They’re just another measure of how much joy the words in the books bring me.
But what happens when the word fluffer gets blocked?
In more ways than one…
Lately I’ve been having trouble finding the words I want for the reviews I want to write. Part of it is my brain telling me nobody wants to read what I write. I’m too long-winded. I’m repetitive. My brain is a chaotic mess of information and adjectives that won’t flow together to form coherent relevant information. So I’ve been sitting on a bunch of reviews, half-finished or barely started, for books I love and want the world to know about. Stuck.
I also have decided to stop reviewing on a major platform that many authors count on for visibility and sales. A platform I’ve felt confident uploading reviews to for years. But I won’t be sharing reviews there going forward. There are two reasons- 1: I can’t review books I’ve edited on that platform. It’s against their terms of service. 2: They’ve recently rejected two reviews I wrote without any indication of why. I’ve gone over the language in them multiple times with multiple people and nobody can figure it out. One was a contemporary romance, the other a rom-com. No trigger words, nothing.
Maybe that’s leading to and playing a big part in my block. The fear of being rejected. Of being unseen. Of being too much or not enough. Either way, I’ll still continue to review on other platforms, as soon as I get a review to actually take and not be a jumbled mess of ellipsis and asterisks indicating where actual words should be. I know they’ll start to flow again at some point. Maybe when I let go of the excessive expectations I have for myself and remember to just enjoy the words and their intentions.
Until then, I’ll continue to edit and read. Take notes and highlight. Enjoy the frack out of all the words. And eventually find my way back to using them again.
