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Lots of "Will Review For Food" Posts; Few Reviews

Nate · 2008-12-16T06:19:23Z

An interesting observation struck me last week, and that is there seemed to be more posts being made in the "Will Review For Food" forum rather than actual reviews in the literary forums. I've been watching this for a week now, and I think this is the fault of both the reviewer and the reviewee, so a couple tips of advice are in order. First, to the reviewer, it is all very well and good to spend an hour or more on a review, but you have to think to yourself if that is time well spent. That is, will you do more good by reviewing three or even five works in an hour, or will you do more good by reviewing just one work in an hour? Of course, it all depends on who and what you are reviewing, but personally, I'd never spend more than ten minutes on a review (amounts to about three an hour). Writing long reviews is great, but you should not be doing so many that it precludes you from reviewing other works. Second, to the reviewee, before requesting a review, make sure you start reviewing works yourself. If you've made twenty reviews in the past week, people are going to be much more receptive to your request than if you've only made five. Additionally, if you're going to make a request in the "Will Review for Food" forum, please only make the request to one or two people. If you request a review from ten people, I guarantee every single one of them will see that and every single one of them will refuse to review your work. Lastly, I want to stress again that not every review should be long. For some reason, a tendency has developed on this site to spend an hour or so on a review, and that does greatly concern me. Authors are typically looking for impressions and any grammatical mistakes they frequently make, not a line by line critique of their work.

smaur

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Points 2834

Reviews 131

Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:41 am

smaur says... · Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:41 am

I am too OCD to not point out all of the issues line-by-line. I sometimes don't do that, but those are rare occasions.

"He yanked himself free and fled to the kitchen where something huddled against the flooded windowpanes. It sighed and wept and tapped continually, and suddenly he was outside, staring in, the rain beating, the wind chilling him, and all the candle darkness inside lost."

Quote

Poetry is my cheap means of transportation. By the end of the poem the reader should be in a different place from where he started. I would like him to be slightly disoriented at the end, like I drove him outside of town at night and dropped him off in a cornfield.
— Billy Collins

Lots of "Will Review For Food" Posts; Few Reviews

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