I have friends who are writers, artists, teachers, musicians.  With rare exception, they all say “I can’t promote myself,  I can’t review my own work.” I’ve learned that’s a cop out since all it takes is a little serious consideration, and you can’t expect anyone to be more excited about your work than you are.  If you’re not excited enough about it to review yourself, you may want to work on that first.  I learned early on with Horizons Magazine that (1) it takes a lot of work to write a review and (2) I don’t have time to get good at it; and (3) printing a book review is giving free ad space, so I instead creating a monthly Suggested Reading and Listening column.

When friends ask me to do a review, I tell them I don’t write reviews and that I believe it’s more important for someone to know how to review themselves.  They need to know how they want their readership to see them.  I ghost for a few writers and have to do short biographies for press releases.  I know that is my chance to frame the words so the writers are perceived by their readers in a way that serves as a setting for what they are about to read; the context I want their words to be taken in.  My chance to set the scene for them.

One exercise I do with friends and clients is to get them comfortable with writing a review from the heart on a topic in their genre that they are passionate about.  That means not a school-book-report, mechanical kind of review.  If you’re a writer or musician, I’ll ask you to write a review of any of the writers whose work you have been influenced by, whose work you appreciate and feel drawn to. Make it an extensive review, that says everything it makes you feel and think.  Then lay it aside and come back to it a couple of hours later.  This gives you some integration time.  Later, go back thru the document and where you wrote the author’s name, scratch out his name and put your own.

After you’ve substituted the names, go back through the text and strike through (not delete) anything that you feel isn’t true for you.  Maybe you don’t feel the way about your own work as you feel about theirs.  Maybe you could.  Step outside yourself and see yourself as you want to be seen by those you write for.  You want them to open up and be receptive to what you have to say, right?  You want them to reach a place of feeling absolute connection with the material and being lost in it, right?

Then have some friends read it.  Ask what they would add to it because you want to publish some reviews.  Go through all the text again and edit as you think it should be.  This exercise helps you connect with your own material in a different way.  It helps give you a language to describe how you want your audience to receive you, how you want them to see you.  It helps you set the scene for what they are about to experience.

You can take a blind child to the ocean for the first time and the roar of the ocean and splash of the wave will frighten and confuse him.  But, if you begin telling him wonderful things about the ocean ahead of time, how delightful it is to be splashed, how the roar is music to your ears, you are setting the scene for him to have a fun experience.  You are giving him a context in which to receive the splashing and the sound of the waves, so he can have a more expansive experience.

Do your audience the favor of knowing that you have created some special something just for them, and that you really care about giving them something of value. You want them to know what to expect to receive, and you’ve given it a lot of thought.  If you’ve connected with it, they will connect with it.  But you’ve got to connect with it first, and this is a great exercise for connecting you with your own work.

And I’m not saying copy someone’s else’s review and substitute your name.  I’m saying write your own review of the work of everyone whose work you were influenced by.  Everyone.  Read online how to write a book review, read reviews online.  A good review takes some soul searching, since you aren’t just summarizing a story, you are telling why you connected with particular passages, what it made you feel and think.  Why it was meaningful to you and why you would recommend it to others.  What would you expect them to get out of it?  What did you get out of it?

By the time you’ve done this, you will have also started the attraction process for people you can ask to review your work.  As far as the review you’ve written?  You could use it and just change the name; people do that all the time with reviews and testimonials.  I’ve told people in the past, you write the review and if I agree with what it says, I’ll put my name on it.  Often it is fine with a minor revisions.  I only do this with work I know, books I’ve read, music I’ve heard, a workshop I’ve attended.

So, whether you ever use the review or not, doing this exercise will help you give your audience the fullest experience you can give them.

Learn to review your own work.