Author reflections
Laughing Off the Haters
Creative writing is powerful. We need to learn to say ‘whatever’ to people who want to drag us down.
Creative writing is a lot of fun, and can be good for our wellbeing, too. It can help with:
- Resilience
- Mental health
- Motivation
Some people come to it later in life, and as it’s a time-consuming skill to learn, of course it takes time to master.
It’s therefore a shame to see people hating on others that are trying to find their feet!
Take this post that I saw on Facebook, recently, for example.
I won’t share the OP’s name to respect their privacy, but it really made me think:
Wow. How mean is that?
Here is someone just trying to have fun with their writing during their retirement, and some asshole decides to tell them to quit.
Perhaps that reader should stop giving advice to authors — they suck at it.
Laughing it off
Of course, it is hurtful to hear negativity, but as a creative writer myself with several books on Amazon, you do kinda get used to it.
In fact, over time, you learn to laugh it off.
I barely read reviews anymore. I already have beta readers and arc readers to give me expert feedback, and by the time a book is in the shops, the feedback doesn’t make much difference to how I feel about it (or myself).
Getting a few positive (5*) reviews can be very important to a book’s visibility, no doubt about it. But if a reader were to say that my book was the worst thing they had read in their life, it wouldn’t affect my publishing plans.
I wouldn’t even lose any sleep over it.
LitRPG author Matt Dinniman took the idea of laughing off bad reviews a step further recently. He ordered a hoodie with images of all his one-star and negative reviews!
How badass is that?
Ultimately, we can’t stop the haters. All we can really do is say “Whatever,” and wear their negativity as a badge of honor.
Literally, in Matt’s case.
After all — you don’t get bad book reviews if you never write anything.
Check out Matt’s LitRPG books here (they are wonderful, by the way), and read the article below if you’d like to find out more about the genre:
Before I sign off, a shoutout to three authors who are great at sharing and bigging up the work of their peers: Angie Mangino, Patrick OConnell and Jann Christoph von der Pütten. All of these writers share a lot of other people’s work on Twitter, including my own. Thanks folks — you rock!
Supportive peers are the best antidote to the haters.
Psst… you can get my posts direct to your inbox. Do that here! 🧠
Also, if you’re new to Medium and considering signing up, why not support my writing and that of thousands of other authors by signing up for a membership with this link. Doing so will support me directly with a portion of your fee, and won’t cost you extra. Thank you! 🌟
