DoodleBug's Reviews > Reclaim Your Author Career: Using the Enneagram to build your strategy, unlock deeper purpose, and celebrate your career

ETA: This author reported the negative review I left on Amazon for their book and had it removed. Nothing says "unprofessional" like protesting a negative review. They have no business advising other authors.

***

Started out fairly interesting, if preachy. As the preachiness increased, the utility decreased. It just got tiresome and boring. The author clearly does not understand what theme is (if you're reducing it to a single word, you're missing a ton of nuance) and their puritanical virtue signaling was offputting, not to mention insulting and, at times, offensive.

Take their assertion that they write in simple language to be "inclusive." What they're really saying is that they don't believe minorities can understand more complex language. Does the author not understand how insulting that is to the intelligence of minorities? Do they not understand how demeaning that is, and how racist?

And then they try to set themselves up as a "victim" of prejudice for one of their "humor" series. So I went and looked at the series. It's an interesting, if poorly executed, concept and it suffers from exactly the same problem as this book: it's boring. Humor depends on 1) great timing and 2) surprise. Neither is present in that oft-mentioned series; her pacing is too slow and her characterization is really horrible (it's based on shallow, poorly rendered stereotypes). Yet the author insists that the reason people don't like that series is because they're prejudiced, racist, pro-Christian, etc.; in their mind, there couldn't possibly be another reason.

This attitude reminds me strongly of the director of the 2018 movie version of A Wrinkle in Time, where the producer/director (whoever it was) insisted that critics were simply racist. No. It's a crappy movie. Period, the end. The producer/director's skin color has nothing to do with that. She did a bad job. But could she accept that? No. Her own ego wouldn't allow it.

Same with this author. It's not the concept people object to, but the fact that the author isn't a great writer. Oh, sure, they do fine with the mechanics (putting together a readable sentence, for example). With the story craft? Not so much. Which just proves that a fancy degree does not make one a writer.

This book would've been far better without that kind of nonsense. I went to this resource looking for desperately needed help. What I got was preached at.

DNF'd somewhere in the middle of the author's bloviated tirade on theme.