Posting after a long and sick break. I'm still not well, but well enough to put in a little keyboard time. The ABNA competition is now in the Quarter Finals, sifting through 250 selections to find the fifty that will go to the Semi-Finals. It seems that the 2011 competition has had more than its share of controversy in that a few of the Vine Reviewers selected by Amazon seemed a bit over-the-top with personal axes to grind. Criticism is always hard to take, but one has to get used to it if a writer is going to make his work public. Constructive criticism is good. A writer can learn from the suggestions and improve his skills. Harsh criticism can be useful as well, if the critic has valid points and substantiates those points. However, criticism meant to squelch a writer personally, especially a young/teen writer, should be viewed as unnecessary and cast that critic in the light of the troll he/she is. Unfortunately, some of the Vine Reviewers took it upon themselves to run down young writers. I know you're asking, "How would they know the age of the writer?". In some of the cases, the critic stated that he/she believed the work to be an attempt by a teen and went downhill from there. Amazon has been notified and I'm hoping that the critic/critics in question gets a dressing down similar to the one he/they gave to some writers. I also hope he's barred from participating in future events. It's a shame that this person felt the need to give the Amazon contest a black eye. Here's to hoping that he gets one back. |