A Question I Get Asked A Lot

…is about trolling, or very harsh or personal criticism.

I don’t know how other people deal with it, but I know I don’t really pay attention anymore (I used to be completely obnoxious about it) and it came from a realization that the internet doesn’t exist solely to cater to my whims. As goofy as it sounds, once that hit me, all the surface noise became meaningless.

Here are my thoughts about it, from an interview with the great http://girls-gone-geek.com/ site.

How you guys handle this is clearly up to you, but once I realized people have the right to hate me and/or my work, it was intensely liberating.

“

 It’s clear that you love your job and your fans. But readers can be grumpy and resistant to change, and we sometimes leap to conclusions about what is happening behind the scenes. If you could make readers understand anything about the reality of creating comics, what would it be?

GS: I honestly don’t think it’s the job of readers to make things more convenient or comfortable for writers. That’s not how I see the relationship. I used to actually go to websites and comment on things people had said about my books — even argue with them. And at some point, you grow up. You realize that the reader doesn’t exist for the edification and egotism of the writer.

I write my stories for me, but I am fortunate enough that people want to read them. That’s something that’s still hard for me to wrap my head around.

I see other creators making that same mistake, or what I feel is a mistake — arguing with readers. I don’t know what response we’re expecting. “Oh, you’re right, now this is my favorite story ever?”

Fandom needs to have its space; it needs to have its freedom. It can get personal and even mean, but I feel like readers need to be able to express their feelings on a story without some creator coming in and being a dickbucket.

And it’s funny, too, because once you realize that, the weirdly personal stuff, even the harshest criticism, it becomes vastly — I mean hugely — unimportant.”