It's developed a lot throughout the years. At first, I wrote only brief ideas about the books I was reading, nothing more than a couple paragraphs. Then I started to have more fun with the blog and created long, four-to-six page rants about each and every aspect of the books I read. Now I fall somewhere between the two other methods, with structured but excited reviews. I probably started writing like this around when the pandemic started, and since then, it's worked well, so in this latest style, these are the steps I follow.
1. Read the book. Obviously, I can't review a book I haven't read. But reading a book with the intention of reviewing it is different from reading a book just for fun. Yes, I pick books I think I'll enjoy, and, yes, I review books that I didn't originally plan to, but usually, I try to keep track of what I like or don't like while reading. Many times, I'll even stop reading to type into my notes app a rough paragraph or two about something specific that's been bouncing around in my mind. I don't often keep the exact wording, but I'll copy the notes into a document and try to work them into my rough draft.
2. Rate it on Goodreads. The rating I give a book on Goodreads right after finishing it is a bigger help than you'd expect. When I'm trying to decide the angle I want for the review (i.e. hate it, love it, boring but respectable), I go back to look at how many stars out of five I gave it. I have a general system I keep with my ratings: one is for terrible books with terrible and/or offensive writing; two is for almost-decent books that didn't make me want to gouge my eyes out, but I didn't enjoy or respect; three is a little more fluid, usually going to books that I really enjoyed but didn't think there was much talent in or books that clearly aren't a work of art but didn't put me to sleep; four stars are for books I absolutely loved with decent writing or great writing that's just a tad boring (this is where more personal taste and knit-picking comes in—is it nonfiction? is there a way I would have preferred it to end? bump it down to four); and finally, five stars are for masterpieces, the books that both keep me invested and showcase phenomenal writing.
3. Look at other reviews (if I'm struggling). If I'm really struggling to come up with what to say in my review, I try to figure out what other people are saying about it, which gives me something to compare my own feelings to. Do I agree with them about the Act 2 plot hole? Is the main character actually interesting? Then I can move forward from there with something original.
4. Write a thesis. I know, I know, what is this, AP Lit? But a thesis helps! And it's not usually very formal, just a collection of the main points I want to make so that the writing process is a little easier. If you look through my reviews, you could probably find it somewhere after the small introduction. My thesis for Wayward Son was, "There were great elements, like narrative style and (some) new characters, but most of the book—character relationships, plot devices, content—gave me an unnatural amount of anxiety."
5. Finish the rough draft. Let me emphasis: rough draft. Nothing you read on my blog hasn't gone through at least one round of edits. The first draft isn't usually done in one sitting, so the flow is terrible, and sometimes it downright doesn't make sense. But without the first draft, I don't have anything to work with.
6. Read twice to edit. Most of the time, I have two rounds of edits. The first one is for big mistakes, things like awkward paragraphs and misconstrued points. In my review of Jo & Laurie, there were two full paragraphs I entirely rewrote because they were confusing and redundant. Next, I read for grammatical errors. Commas, capitalization, etc.—all those are fixed during this stage (at least, as many of them as I can find, but I'm not perfect).
7. Come up with a fun title. Sometimes, the title comes to me while I'm writing, like with my final Mediator review. I'm pretty sure I thought of "I'm sick of books with bad endings" way back when I started my review of the early Mediator books. At that point, I'd pretty much planned out how I wanted all three of the reviews I was writing for the series to go; it was only a matter of getting it on the page. Most of the time, title writing is my favorite part of the process. I always try to make it something different than what I've done before, something that gets across the homey, casual feelings I always want to have in my blog posts. Sometimes, I like to make it short and sweet, like the final Mediator book, and sometimes I like to make it long and ridiculous, like when I titled my first Taylor Swift book art post, "I guess I have a new hobby now, because I've made way too much of this very specific fanart for it to be anything else."
8. And then I post it! And then I put the process on repeat, repeat, repeat, writing review after review, although I'm not usually able to get out more than one post a month.
Surprisingly, I don't often revisit old posts. With any of my other writing, I love reading old work, but the blog feels so pointless to reread. I'm not actually sure why; maybe because it's my opinion, and I remember it better? Or because I don't want to find a grammatical mistake and cringe? For whatever reason, once it's up, I pretend it doesn't exist and move on.
It's a shorter one today (probably why I was able to put it out so soon after the last post). What do you think, talk about the writing process more in the future? Or stick to the usual? Hopefully, I'll be back before the New Year with another review or another fun post. Until then, keep reading, readers.