Negativity
We have covered a number of topics in the last several weeks. This week’s topic has popped up in a number of different posts but I haven’t addressed it directly, until now. Negativity. It comes in many forms and many different directions. This week I want to talk about negativity from the outside world and from ourselves.
Negativity is everywhere and it can come from anywhere, home, work, etc. It can come from strangers you meet at events or in everyday life. When they find out you’re an author, they stop talking to you and look at you as if you are less than they are. They snub you because of the fact you create instead of doing what they feel you should be doing with your life. It can also come from another author. Someone who may have been doing this for a long time and has found some success and has forgotten where they started. Or maybe someone that is wanting to just get a reaction, be it negative or positive, out of anyone.
Negativity can come from loved ones who feel you are wasting your time or should be more “normal”. Some may even tell you that it’s a waste of time to be an author because you will never be the next J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. They look at you with pity as if you just don’t see what you really are. There is also our own negativity we dish out at ourselves.
I have experienced a number of these forms of negativity and in some ways it still shocks me. Most people find out I’m a writer and they are curious about what I write and what I do. They ask questions that I am happy to answer. For some they find out I am a writer and they look at me as if I am crazy. As if I’m a dreamer who will never make it and I need a hard reality check. What they don’t know about me is the struggles I have gone through to get to where I am today. They don’t see that I have worked many different jobs and raised two kids and been broke as a joke while doing it. Or the fact that I had to find myself after losing who I was in my family. These strangers hear “writer” and they think I have no clue what a hard days work looks like. There is a preconceived idea of what artists are. Most artists, whether it’s someone who is a writer, a painter, or a songwriter work day jobs while trying to improve their craft and make a name for themselves. They are striving for greatness just like so many others are at their regular paying jobs.
I have also experienced what it is to have an author who dishes out negativity. I have told all of you how wonderful the writing community is and they are but there are always one or two bad apples in the bunch. I have recently had two experiences from two separate writers. The first one was from someone who seemed to be a rather successful author. She friend requested me and I accepted seeing that she was an author. Then I began to read her posts. She posted multiple times to not send her invites to our author pages, bragged about the amount of money she was pulling in and some things that should never go on your page about your home life. The more I read of her posts, the more I saw what kind of person she was. She was negative type of person who didn’t really want to help other authors but wanted to jump up and down saying “Look at me! Look at me!” I have little patience for individuals like this and I quickly unfriended this individual.
Another experience I had was a little more personal. I was part of a writing group and a question was asked what made a book bad. Now in my opinion there are no bad books. Reading is a subjective thing. What I may enjoy reading another may not. I said that on the post and only a few agreed with me. Then someone brought up the book Twilight. Now I absolutely hate when anyone points at that series as says it's awful. For one, it got a generation of girls who were not reading to read. We as adults should be celebrating that they were reading, not trashing the books. Secondly, I have read the books and I didn’t think they were terrible. Were they Anne Rice style of writing, no. But they were enjoyable. Following this comment was a man who said all paranormal romance was about rape and that anyone who writes paranormal romance is just acting out on paper their rape fantasy. Now this was personal on many different levels. I am a paranormal romance author. I have no rape fantasy and how dare anyone degrade my writing in such a way or any other author who writes paranormal romance. It was offensive. The offense I took was the fact that someone would equate one genre to rape. I was a volunteer advocate for a rape crisis center. I have known more than one person who has been raped and I have my own experience in that area. So this angered me. Now the smart play would have been to just not to engage in any discussion with this individual. Unfortunately, I tend to be a bit of a reactionary when it comes to certain topics. This is one of them. I responded and so did another woman, who is a writer and we both reacted strongly. He responded and this led to an argument. It took several hours and two or three post to calm down enough to see this was what this guy was looking for. He wanted to poke a response from anyone and I gave him that. What I should have done was ignored him, instead of giving him what he wanted. He then played the victim and acted like we had attacked him because we misunderstood what he said. We didn’t, but he won because he got what he was looking for.
The last two forms are the most harmful of negativity. The negativity from our loved ones and from ourselves. The people who are supposed to be the most supportive can also be the most damaging to us. Outside of my mom and before I became a published author, I had a family who was not supportive of my dream to be a writer. I was told by all of them, I needed to be more normal when I was a kid. As a young adult when I said I wanted to be a writer I was told I was not special or good enough to be a writer. It was fine to dabble in it for now but I needed to find a nice normal career that I could support myself on. Being a writer was just wishful thinking. For a long time I believed that. I told myself I was to be a wife and a mother and nothing more. Dreaming was a waste of time because dreams didn’t come true. I ignored my needs and wants for years in order to take care of my family and be what thought I should be. I did this until I was so miserable I hated everything around me. It took a death in my family and everything I had ever known as my family to disintegrate for me to see how miserable I was. It took me another five years to find myself. What I found was it wasn’t just my loved ones selling me a bag of lies, it was me buying those lies for all of those years. I still have some negativity towards myself. I am my own worst critic. When I miss a goal or a deadline I have created for myself, I spend a couple days kicking myself for my failure. I recently finished the first edit of book four of The Hellborn Series. I have three books I am editing currently. One of them is on it’s final edit and getting ready for publication. And I am about to start book five’s research and outline. When I finished the first edit of book four I had no sense of accomplishment. Three days in a row last week, I didn’t meet my goal for pages to edit. I wasn’t content with the last chapter nor was I happy with the lack of intensity in a love scene. The night I finished the edit I spent the next three hours just kicking my own ass. I felt like I was failing not just myself but Savannah. I wasn’t doing her story justice as I had with the other books. I began to question why I had failed to deliver with this book. It was a good book but it was in some ways missing it’s mark. Was I losing my love for Savannah? Was working full time harming my craft? If it was, did that mean everyone who ever told me I couldn’t do it was right? I went to bed not feeling good or accomplished that night. At some point in the middle of the night, I started seeing what I was missing. The next morning while I worked out and showered I thought about all the problems I was feeling and seeing. It became clear what I needed to do. The first thing was re-edit that last chapter. I shouldn’t have pushed to finish the book the night before. I should have waited on the final chapter when I had fresh eyes to do the work. I didn’t and the consequences was me feeling like crap about what I had done. The next step was to go over my note cards for the edit. I had missed a few things I knew I needed to add. I went back and made those adjustments. I also re-edited the love scene and added more intensity to it.
So how do we stop the negativity? We can’t but we can limit what we allow in our lives. The people who look at you as if you are crazy for chasing this dream, ignore them. Shut them out and there judgement of how you are living your life. I recently read a quote that said “don’t take criticism from someone you would not take advice from.” It’s true. Those strangers who snub you, ignore them and hold your head up and move on. The same goes for other writers. Only connect yourself with people who are supportive of you and you can be of them. Unfriend that individual who makes you feel bad or not as good as them. Unfollow individuals who want to drag you down. This goes for loved ones as well. Just because you share DNA doesn’t mean you have to let those people into your life nor keep them in your life. Surround yourself with people who love and support you. And tell the rest to fuck off. For the personal negativity, remember you are human and you can’t always meet those goals. Remind yourself that you and your writing is a work in progress. Strive for the best version of yourself not perfection. Perfection is not possible because no one is perfect so no story will be perfect either. Also perfection is pretty damn boring. Until next time!
Negativity is everywhere and it can come from anywhere, home, work, etc. It can come from strangers you meet at events or in everyday life. When they find out you’re an author, they stop talking to you and look at you as if you are less than they are. They snub you because of the fact you create instead of doing what they feel you should be doing with your life. It can also come from another author. Someone who may have been doing this for a long time and has found some success and has forgotten where they started. Or maybe someone that is wanting to just get a reaction, be it negative or positive, out of anyone.
Negativity can come from loved ones who feel you are wasting your time or should be more “normal”. Some may even tell you that it’s a waste of time to be an author because you will never be the next J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. They look at you with pity as if you just don’t see what you really are. There is also our own negativity we dish out at ourselves.
I have experienced a number of these forms of negativity and in some ways it still shocks me. Most people find out I’m a writer and they are curious about what I write and what I do. They ask questions that I am happy to answer. For some they find out I am a writer and they look at me as if I am crazy. As if I’m a dreamer who will never make it and I need a hard reality check. What they don’t know about me is the struggles I have gone through to get to where I am today. They don’t see that I have worked many different jobs and raised two kids and been broke as a joke while doing it. Or the fact that I had to find myself after losing who I was in my family. These strangers hear “writer” and they think I have no clue what a hard days work looks like. There is a preconceived idea of what artists are. Most artists, whether it’s someone who is a writer, a painter, or a songwriter work day jobs while trying to improve their craft and make a name for themselves. They are striving for greatness just like so many others are at their regular paying jobs.
I have also experienced what it is to have an author who dishes out negativity. I have told all of you how wonderful the writing community is and they are but there are always one or two bad apples in the bunch. I have recently had two experiences from two separate writers. The first one was from someone who seemed to be a rather successful author. She friend requested me and I accepted seeing that she was an author. Then I began to read her posts. She posted multiple times to not send her invites to our author pages, bragged about the amount of money she was pulling in and some things that should never go on your page about your home life. The more I read of her posts, the more I saw what kind of person she was. She was negative type of person who didn’t really want to help other authors but wanted to jump up and down saying “Look at me! Look at me!” I have little patience for individuals like this and I quickly unfriended this individual.
Another experience I had was a little more personal. I was part of a writing group and a question was asked what made a book bad. Now in my opinion there are no bad books. Reading is a subjective thing. What I may enjoy reading another may not. I said that on the post and only a few agreed with me. Then someone brought up the book Twilight. Now I absolutely hate when anyone points at that series as says it's awful. For one, it got a generation of girls who were not reading to read. We as adults should be celebrating that they were reading, not trashing the books. Secondly, I have read the books and I didn’t think they were terrible. Were they Anne Rice style of writing, no. But they were enjoyable. Following this comment was a man who said all paranormal romance was about rape and that anyone who writes paranormal romance is just acting out on paper their rape fantasy. Now this was personal on many different levels. I am a paranormal romance author. I have no rape fantasy and how dare anyone degrade my writing in such a way or any other author who writes paranormal romance. It was offensive. The offense I took was the fact that someone would equate one genre to rape. I was a volunteer advocate for a rape crisis center. I have known more than one person who has been raped and I have my own experience in that area. So this angered me. Now the smart play would have been to just not to engage in any discussion with this individual. Unfortunately, I tend to be a bit of a reactionary when it comes to certain topics. This is one of them. I responded and so did another woman, who is a writer and we both reacted strongly. He responded and this led to an argument. It took several hours and two or three post to calm down enough to see this was what this guy was looking for. He wanted to poke a response from anyone and I gave him that. What I should have done was ignored him, instead of giving him what he wanted. He then played the victim and acted like we had attacked him because we misunderstood what he said. We didn’t, but he won because he got what he was looking for.
The last two forms are the most harmful of negativity. The negativity from our loved ones and from ourselves. The people who are supposed to be the most supportive can also be the most damaging to us. Outside of my mom and before I became a published author, I had a family who was not supportive of my dream to be a writer. I was told by all of them, I needed to be more normal when I was a kid. As a young adult when I said I wanted to be a writer I was told I was not special or good enough to be a writer. It was fine to dabble in it for now but I needed to find a nice normal career that I could support myself on. Being a writer was just wishful thinking. For a long time I believed that. I told myself I was to be a wife and a mother and nothing more. Dreaming was a waste of time because dreams didn’t come true. I ignored my needs and wants for years in order to take care of my family and be what thought I should be. I did this until I was so miserable I hated everything around me. It took a death in my family and everything I had ever known as my family to disintegrate for me to see how miserable I was. It took me another five years to find myself. What I found was it wasn’t just my loved ones selling me a bag of lies, it was me buying those lies for all of those years. I still have some negativity towards myself. I am my own worst critic. When I miss a goal or a deadline I have created for myself, I spend a couple days kicking myself for my failure. I recently finished the first edit of book four of The Hellborn Series. I have three books I am editing currently. One of them is on it’s final edit and getting ready for publication. And I am about to start book five’s research and outline. When I finished the first edit of book four I had no sense of accomplishment. Three days in a row last week, I didn’t meet my goal for pages to edit. I wasn’t content with the last chapter nor was I happy with the lack of intensity in a love scene. The night I finished the edit I spent the next three hours just kicking my own ass. I felt like I was failing not just myself but Savannah. I wasn’t doing her story justice as I had with the other books. I began to question why I had failed to deliver with this book. It was a good book but it was in some ways missing it’s mark. Was I losing my love for Savannah? Was working full time harming my craft? If it was, did that mean everyone who ever told me I couldn’t do it was right? I went to bed not feeling good or accomplished that night. At some point in the middle of the night, I started seeing what I was missing. The next morning while I worked out and showered I thought about all the problems I was feeling and seeing. It became clear what I needed to do. The first thing was re-edit that last chapter. I shouldn’t have pushed to finish the book the night before. I should have waited on the final chapter when I had fresh eyes to do the work. I didn’t and the consequences was me feeling like crap about what I had done. The next step was to go over my note cards for the edit. I had missed a few things I knew I needed to add. I went back and made those adjustments. I also re-edited the love scene and added more intensity to it.
So how do we stop the negativity? We can’t but we can limit what we allow in our lives. The people who look at you as if you are crazy for chasing this dream, ignore them. Shut them out and there judgement of how you are living your life. I recently read a quote that said “don’t take criticism from someone you would not take advice from.” It’s true. Those strangers who snub you, ignore them and hold your head up and move on. The same goes for other writers. Only connect yourself with people who are supportive of you and you can be of them. Unfriend that individual who makes you feel bad or not as good as them. Unfollow individuals who want to drag you down. This goes for loved ones as well. Just because you share DNA doesn’t mean you have to let those people into your life nor keep them in your life. Surround yourself with people who love and support you. And tell the rest to fuck off. For the personal negativity, remember you are human and you can’t always meet those goals. Remind yourself that you and your writing is a work in progress. Strive for the best version of yourself not perfection. Perfection is not possible because no one is perfect so no story will be perfect either. Also perfection is pretty damn boring. Until next time!
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