Okay, let me first say that I have virtually no idea what I’m talking about (of course, you probably already knew that).

That said, it has recently occurred to me that in order to be an artist, whether a writer, painter, musician, dancer, sculptor, or whatever, you’ve got to have some seriously thick Rhino skin.

A little while back, discouraged by the lack of sales of my novel Thumperica! A Novel of the Ghost of America Future, as well as my inability to get anyone to read it even if I gave it to them, I realized that basically, nobody wants to read my shit. I even thought about writing a post with that theme (more on that later).

I was really having a hard time getting any feedback on it, and many of those who had read it didn’t really seem to know what to say about it. When asked about it, they’d say things like “Wellllll, it was certainly interesting” or “Ya know, I’m still processing it” and they had the sort of look you get when a new parent is showing off their brand-new baby that looks like a cross between E.T. and an orangutan. You know what I mean – when you grit your teeth and say “Oh isn’t it – I mean she- precious!?” or, the non-committal, “You must be so proud.”

You know what I’m talking about. We all have babies like that in our families. Some of us were those babies. And we turned out alright – well I’m sure most of the others did.

Even those who seemed to genuinely like the book seemed at a loss as to why exactly. It was a little disconcerting. I also realized that my book would not be to everyone’s taste, and especially to most of the people who read this blog – after all, who am I kidding – most of you only found this blog because you were googling “Rich Mullins”, and those of you who stuck around probably only do so out of pure morbid curiosity. It’s okay, I’m not proud – I’ll take what I can get.

Finally, I decided to bite the bullet and send my baby off to a professional reviewer, Kirkus Reviews, to get an unbiased opinion on it. After all, your friends are probably too polite to mention that your bouncing baby boy looks like a scrofulous blobfish, but a doctor’s gonna say “Holy smokes, that thing ain’t right! We need to do something about that”

Conversely, your friends might simply be too jealous to give your pride and joy the effusive praise it deserves. Anything’s possible right?

Well, as it turns out, according to Kirkus Reviews, one of the biggest names in the book-reviewing game, my baby is . . .

. . . A scrofulous blobfish!

Not only that, but a pedestrian scrofulous blobfish! Note that in this case, “pedestrian” is defined as “lacking inspiration or excitement; dull”, and synonymous with “dull, plodding, boring, tedious, monotonous, uneventful, unremarkable, tiresome, wearisome, uninspired, uncreative, unimaginative, unexciting, un-interesting, lifeless, dry; unvarying, unvaried, repetitive, repetitious,  routine, commonplace, average, workaday; ordinary, everyday, unoriginal, derivative, mediocre, run-of-the-mill, flat, prosaic, matter-of-fact, turgid, stodgy, mundane, humdrum . . .” (Lexico.com)

Ironically (not to mention adding insult to injury), when I looked “pedestrian” up, an add for Kirkus Reviews popped up on the Lexico.com page.

Honestly, I thought it started out promising: ” A futuristic farce explores the dystopian nightmare that results from one man’s ascendancy to the Oval Office,” but that first line turned out to just be a little decorative paint on the edge of the cliff.

I suppose it could be considered a compliment to have both Kurt Vonnegut and Jonathan Swift mentioned in the review, even if only to point out how far short I fell of my ambitions. At least that’s what I tell myself.

To be honest, I was a little hurt. But that’s where the rhino skin comes in. After reading (and compulsively re-reading – I’m pretty sure I gave the review much more attention than the reviewer gave my book), I realized that it doesn’t really matter what this clown thinks of my book. In fact, I’m pretty sure that he/she didn’t even read the whole thing (every every instance cited in the review occurs in the first 124 pages of a 295-page book).

In all fairness, the Kirkus folks were very upfront about not guaranteeing a good review (if they did, their reviews would be worthless), but I have to say I still feel a little bit cheated: if I’m going to pay way too much money to have my work insulted, I at least expect it to be insulted in its entirety. Not only that, but, in order to use excerpts from the review, I have to give them permission to publish it (not sure if that counts as adding insult to injury, or injury to insult).

But enough about that. If you want to read the review in its entirety, here’s a link: Thumperica! Kirkus Review. Enjoy!

But that’s what I mean about rhino skin. To do this sort of thing, you’ve gotta be tough. You’ve gotta be able to take the hits. Of course, you could be reasonable, and just not read reviews, much less pay for them, but let’s face it, “reasonable” is not really in my toolbox.

I do take comfort in the knowledge that many classic, influential novels have gotten lousy reviews, including Moby Dick, The Handmaid’s Tale, Catch-22, The Great Gatsby, For Whom the Bell Tolls, etc. (and don’t get me wrong, Thumperica! is NOT in their league, but “pedestrian”? Man that hurts).Many of the world’s greatest artists labored in obscurity, only becoming rich and famous after they were dead (at which point it didn’t do them much good).

No, I think the most important thing is that an artist of whatever variety needs to have something to say, confidence that it’s worth saying, and the courage to say it, and damn the torpedoes.

But it’s not easy. Like I said earlier, in a fit of depression (self-pity), I was tempted to write a post entitled, “Nobody Wants to Read My Shit”.

Then a friend pointed out to me that somebody (actually, best-selling novelist Steven Pressfield) has already written that book: Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is, and What You Can Do About It.

I have to admit that, when I looked it up, I was a little hurt. Not only had he stolen my idea preemptively, but how did he know nobody wanted to read my shit? I mean, I was flattered that he’d heard of me, but did he have to be so hurtful? After all, I’m pretty sure he’s never read my book.

Anyway, after reading the subtitle, I thought, well, maybe he’s just trying to help. So I bought it. I’ll let you know if it does.