Sending out your Babies

I've been holidaying at the beach with my family, and an incident got me thinking about how I'll handle reviews and comments from strangers on Scandal's Daughter.

My 4 year old son adores the surf. If he's on a beach, he's in the water, regardless of the temperature or what he's wearing. This becomes problematic if we want to go for a walk and stay relatively dry. One of us has to wear a swim suit in case we have to fish a bedraggled rat out of the shallows.

So, for the first time since we began our stay, I had set aside writing time. My parents were staying with us overnight, which means my husband and I had a bit of freedom and while everyone else went to the beach, I was going to stay home and write. I made coffee, found a quiet place in the shade with my laptop and the paperbark trees and scarlet hibiscus to look at and dream and plot. It was quiet, the breeze rustled, the ocean pounded in the distance, but there was no crying baby, no stomping, tromping, singing at the top of his lungs four year old. I had one of the dogs, myself and...

"We're back." All of my family trouped back through the gate.

I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say, my mother, a very loving, protective parent had had a difference of opinion with my husband regarding my 4yo's safety, which had resulted in both her and the baby getting sopping wet. My husband's philosophy is to intervene only when absolutely necessary. In this circumstance, he had not seen the need.

I don't know the right and wrongs of it. There probably aren't any. I removed baby and harness from my mother, washed and dried and dressed baby, and closed my laptop with, I admit, rather bad grace. I didn't get another opportunity to write that day.

But the incident got me thinking, how will I react to criticism of Scandal's Daughter? On the one hand, I believe there is value in reviews, not to the author (definitely not to the author!!), but to readers and to the way the romance genre is discussed and shaped. OK, perhaps reviews benefit authors in terms of sales and creating a buzz but they mess with the creative process, which to most authors is more important than sales. But I digress.

Books are like an author's children, we've all heard that before. So, will I be like my husband and distance myself from the book, thereby giving the critics less power to hurt if they're so inclined? Will I, having dreamed and nurtured the story, honed it and passionately advocated its merits to agents and editors, then set it free? Perhaps avoid reading reviews altogether, as the wonderful author, Anne Gracie told me I should? Or will I clutch it to my chest and defend it (if only in my mind) against any whisper of negativity?

The truth is, I'm not sure. I think even if it were possible, it is not good to distance myself from something that is essentially a part of me. On the other hand, I cannot afford the time, much less the angst and energy wasted on what is really a bunch of subjective and, more often than not conflicting, opinions. Where to draw the line? I suppose I will know, or not, when the time comes.

What about you? How do you handle criticism of your babies?