Tomato, Tomahto

A woman in Montreal says my book is terrible. A preacher in North Carolina says my book is his favorite. There's a reader who says I have no redeeming qualities. There's a reader who says I am funny and smart and full of life and love. One reader says I'm glib about being a terrible mother while another says the love I have for my son is clear.

The conclusion I've come to is this: some readers like my book but some readers don't.

I think this is where 15 years of teaching at the college level comes in handy. I'm used to being reviewed. Fifteen years is thirty semesters, and at the end of each of those semesters, students in my classes fill out anonymous class evaluations. Thousands of students have rated, critiqued, evaluated the job I did--did they learn anything; was the course well organized; did I seem interested in teaching the class; was I enthusiastic, did I seem like I knew what I was talking about, and so on. My students never give me high marks in organization (and they're right, though I always try to be organized, I really do try! and fail) but the majority of them rate me well in everything else.

Except for one person. There's always one person every semester who's not happy with me, one person who gives me zeros in all categories.

And sometimes that person writes in a comment, too, to further express his or her dissatisfaction.

My favorite of these was this: "Every time Diana says good morning it makes me want to vomit."

I'd only been teaching a year or two when I got that comment, and I remember it made me feel 1) amused; and 2) sort of bad. I talked to the guy who was my department chair about it, and he said, "Well, it looks like you pissed someone off. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It means you've done your job. It's not good if everyone hates you but it's also not good if everyone loves you. If you haven't pissed at least one person off, then you haven't done your job."

I think that's true for writers, too.