Four Hard Things I Want You to Know About Writing

#1: Reviews aren’t for writer, they’re for readers.

If you are a writer, there will be times when you find yourself either actually or metaphorically curled into a ball under your blankets, weeping.

This is an intense business. It swings wildly between being utterly isolating and putting you smack in the middle of everyone looking at you.

There are a few things I think you should know.

Reviews aren’t for writers, they’re for readers

I’m not talking about professional reviewers here. I mean reviews on Goodreads or Amazon. Reader reviews.

I know. They feel so personal.

Reviews feel like your readers are writing directly to you. Love letters. Or hate mail. Sometimes something in between, but that’s even worse than hate mail. Mediocre mail? Who wants that?

A three star review is the literary equivalent of a shrug.

Here’s what I want you to know: Those reviews are not for you. The readers who write them? They aren’t thinking about you. They’re writing for other readers.

The best thing you can do for yourself and your sanity is not even look. I know how hard that is. As hard as I try, sometimes I fail. Or sometimes a review just shows up, right in front of my nose.

That happened to me yesterday. Someone from my tiny little MFA program gave my book three stars (there’s that shrug) on Goodreads. No review. Just, three stars.

Since you can’t always not look, the next best thing is to just remember that those reviews aren’t for you. Reading them is like looking through someone else’s mail.

If you were going to do that, you wouldn’t actually respond to it, right?

Whatever you do, don’t respond to it. It doesn’t take much Googling to find out what happens to writers when they respond to harsh reviews, especially on Goodreads.

If you do look, and you find something you don’t like, just let it flow over you. There isn’t a whole lot else you can do, because . . .

Your story is only yours until you let it go

Once your book is in a reader’s hands, it belongs to them. And they’re going to read it how they read it. You don’t get to stand over their shoulder and tell them how you want them to understand your story.

Your story is wholly yours as long as it’s on your hard drive. Tell it your way. Write it your way. But when you ship it, know that it belongs to whoever reads it.

And that’s as it should be.

Aren’t you glad that the books you read and love are yours? That you get to experience them in your own way?

Comparison really is the thief of your joy

There are thousands of writers out there. Tens of thousands. Maybe even more than that. Imagine all of those writers standing shoulder-by-shoulder, all in a row, ranked from most successful (whatever that means to you) to least.

You and your career are somewhere on that continuum.

Chances are very, very good that if you’re reading this, you are not in the number one position.

That means that there will always be someone doing better than you are. Someone who landed an agent when you’ve failed hundreds of times. Someone who got a bigger advance. Someone who in on a bestseller list. Someone whose book is more beloved. Someone who has a movie deal or a nicer cover or gets an invitation that you didn’t.

Do what you can to stay focused on your own career. Try to remember to reach back and encourage the people coming up behind you. And pay attention to the people ahead of you, they probably have something to teach you.

But don’t compare yourself to them. Your joy is worth more than that.

The only balm for a broken heart is the next story

This business will break your heart. It just will. There is too much rejection, too much subjectivity, too many chances for failure, for it not to break your heart.

You should know that going in.

Also this: if it doesn’t break your heart sometimes, you’re probably not putting enough into it.

The best medicine is to tell the next story. Be so engrossed in the next story that when the rejections come rolling in, or when a bad review steps on your spleen, or when someone else wins an award that you didn’t — you’re too busy and too in love to be devastated.

Falling in love with our stories is one of the few absolute joys of being a writer. I highly recommend doing it as often as possible.

Here’s my secret weapon for sticking with whatever your thing is.

Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the original Ninja Writer.