One Negative Comment
Yesterday I was delighted to receive an email from Jenna Hatfield, Family Section Editor at BlogHer, letting me know that one of my posts was being featured! Recently (very recently as this was my second post) I started cross-posting some of my posts on BlogHer.
Turns out that it's an excellent way to get more exposure for your writing and your blogs. As of this morning my little post was read 855 times; traffic here on A Slice of Life Writing was up yesterday too.
When I posted Baby Shower here last week it seemed to be popular with regular readers. Eight kind readers clicked the Facebook "Like" button at the end of the post and it was even featured as a Site to See at As The Crackerhead Crumbles. All in all, I was pleased with the post and thrilled when I learned BlogHer featured it. I received a few nice comments over there too.
So why can't I get the one negative comment written about it on BlogHer out of my mind?
The commenter made mention of "dramatic and unnecessary gasping" in the post. Apparently my attempt at humor didn't set well with everyone.
Reference was made to the very-real dangers of putting babies to sleep on their tummies and nursery furniture that is below today's safety standards, implying that I made light of advances in safety in recent generations. On the contrary, I couldn't be more grateful for every safety precaution my children are taking with my grandchildren to keep them healthy and safe.
In my mind the first section of the post was obviously written with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek; I assumed it read that way too.
If one negative comment bothered me that much, I can't help but look forward to when my memoir is published. I don't expect that everyone will love it; I'm sure there will be some less-than-flattering comments. We all have different likes and dislikes, and that's just fine.
I realized that this pre-publication time is a perfect opportunity to start preparing myself mentally and emotionally to handle negativity and criticism about my book.
No one ever said the path of a memoir writer was going to be easy. That's okay. I still believe it's the right path for me.
