Preparing for People Who Won’t Like Your Writing (and How Not to Take It Personally)
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I’ve written before about how writers seek criticism when what they really want is praise. Who doesn’t? Everybody wants their endeavours – regardless of what those endeavours are – to be validated. But no matter how hard a writer works on a piece of writing, there will be people who won’t like it. Not necessarily because it’s bad but just because. That’s life.
A writer can solve this problem by choosing not to release their writing. But it smacks of cowardice and self-perpetuating redundancy. Most people who write want to be read. So we find the courage from somewhere while reminding ourselves that universal popularity just isn’t possible. Because for every person or book or movie or decision that seemed to have plenty of admirers, there will always be a group of people who vehemently dislike or disagree with them or it. Their dislike or disagreement may be valid. It may have carefully considered logic behind it. But it may also simply be a reflection of personal prejudices or specific preferences.
I know I’m in a very small minority of people who find Brad Pitt and Jude Law not attractive but smarmy and a little bit creepy. Possibly there’s some long repressed episode in my past that explains why. But let’s not get side tracked. Here’s a more literary example. I’m not really a fan of the Harry Potter franchise. I’ve read the first book and wasn’t inclined to read any more in the series. I’ve seen the first movie and fallen asleep multiple times trying to watch the second so I haven’t bothered with any of the others. It’s not that I hate Harry Potter. I don’t have a problem with the fact that so many other people love him. He’s just not my cup of tea. I don’t think JK Rowling would have any problems with me expressing that sentiment (and if she did, I expect her hundreds of millions of dollars in income from all the people who love Harry Potter would really help soothe any pain).
Readers aren’t under any obligation to like what a writer has written. And still it will be hard for a writer to be confronted by the evidence of this. So here are a few things to remember when it does eventually happen that might soften the blow.
Target Audiences
Certain storylines, characters, genres and styles of writing will have a clearly defined target audience. Romance is more predominantly read by women. Christian fiction is more predominantly read by Christians. Young boys are more likely to be the primary audience of books with “underpants” and “bum” in the title. So when a man reads a romance or an atheist reads Christian fiction or a thirty-something woman reads The Day My Bum Went Psycho, the likelihood is that they aren’t going to respond to it as favourably as those target audiences will.
As a writer, you will rarely know who your readers are unless they reach out to you. You’ll get a royalty statement listing the platforms you’ve been sold on and the quantities and that’s about it. It can be frustrating as hell. Even when your books are reviewed, a Goodreads or Amazon account name or a Twitter handle aren’t going to tell you much. And knowing something about the people who haven’t responded to your writing the way you had hoped they would won’t achieve anything anyway. You just have to remember that you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Genre Snobs
Whenever I review a book in a genre I don’t particularly enjoy, especially where I haven’t enjoyed that book specifically, I always start my review by stating that. I think it’s only fair to the author and other potential readers to let them know that my personal preferences may have contributed to why I feel that way. I don’t think I’m a genre snob – I read pretty much everything apart from erotica – but fantasy isn’t my favourite, I find romance a bit repetitive and steampunk a little strange. However, I still read them occasionally.
Some people, though, really don’t like reading outside of their preferred genres. And when they do, instead of being able to objectively assess what they’ve read, they can only look at it subjectively. They didn’t like it and that’s that.
Just like being read by those outside of your target audience, you’re not likely to know anything about those reading outside of their preferred genres. Perhaps your marketing was good enough to tempt them to cross the boundary, so that’s something to console yourself with. But it’s far more important to please those who like reading the genre you’re writing in.
Trolls
Once upon a time, trolls had to invest the time to write a physical letter and the money for a stamp in order to be mean. And a quick-thinking manager could weed them out before they got to the author. Now it’s as simple as opening a browser and finding a target and their abuse immediately hits home. There’s not much I can say about trolls except that they are sociopaths who don’t deserve to be acknowledged.
The best course of action is to report them to the administrators of whatever online platform they are harassing you on, block them if possible, report them to local law enforcement if it becomes threatening and move on knowing you are in some very good company. Often it’s the best and the brightest who are trolled.
Reading Your Own Reviews
A lot of famous people advocate not reading reviews for the sake of maintaining mental health. So should you? On the one hand, it’s a way of potentially improving. On the other, it could be a long dark slide into depression. It can depend on whether you take criticism well or not. It can also depend on whether you can differentiate between what should be taken on board and what should be ignored entirely. (Most platforms like Goodreads and Amazon have rules about what is appropriate and mechanisms for flagging inappropriate reviews for removal. Of course, a bad review isn’t necessarily inappropriate.)
The problem with ignoring reviews is that you end up ignoring the people who liked your writing as well as those who didn’t. Maybe you can get your partner or your mum or your friend to preview them for you and help make the decision. Maybe you’re brave enough to do it on your own. Maybe you can make a “mean tweets” segment out of it.
Even if you’re determined to avoid your own reviews, it’s likely you’re going to come across them at some point so it’s best to be prepared. Take the fawning adoration as well as the bitter hatred with a grain of salt and focus on the thoughtful reviews that fall somewhere in the middle. But don’t take any of them – good or bad – to heart.
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The most important thing to remember is that you are not your writing. Yes, your writing is intrinsically linked with who you are, it’s great when it is liked and it sucks when it isn’t. But there is no correlation between talent (or a lack thereof) and your worth as a person. Reviews and reactions from the general public should recognise this, too. If they don’t, this says more about them than it does about you. And if you can manage not to take it personally, you’ll go a lot further with your writing than somebody who lives and dies with every reaction from the reading public.
