The Hidden Emotional Cost of Writing > Likes and Comments

Writing a book is hard work. It requires several months of study and research just to begin structuring the project. It also requires a financial effort: searching for and buying books that are often difficult to find, taking time away from other commitments to spend in libraries and, in some cases, translating texts from languages one barely knows.

There is no guarantee of success. When you finish writing, you do not know who will like your work, who will hate it, and who will simply find it irrelevant. The latter possibility frightens me the most because it gives me the feeling that I have written nothing useful or interesting and that I have wasted my time. Yet this, too, is part of the game and has to be accepted.

The reader, like the customer, is entitled to his or her own judgment, and whatever assessment is made of the book must be accepted without reservation. A bad review hurts because it inevitably wounds our narcissism, and I am not the kind of person who tries to be optimistic when there is no reason to be. When we write, we simply have to take into account that someone will disagree with us and will not love our work.

What really bothers me, however, and seems to be happening more and more often, are threats, negative reviews written by obviously fake profiles, and the personal hostility of people who have no interest whatsoever in what you write but simply want to hurt you. It bothers me because I realize that I am completely defenseless against this kind of behavior and that it is genuinely difficult, even for the administrators of websites like this one, to distinguish an honest, if harsh, review from violent or manipulative conduct.

So I would like to ask other authors what they think, how they protect themselves, and what we can do to escape this trap.

Davide Borrelli wrote:  "... I would like to ask other authors what they think, how they protect themselves, and what we can do to escape this trap."

To protect yourself, stop living for sales.
Stop seeking the approval of strangers.

Goodreads feeds and breeds the scammers and trolls.
To escape their trap, shut down Goodreads.
Not that difficult, since it's already in decline.

Dennis wrote: "Davide Borrelli wrote:  "... I would like to ask other authors what they think, how they protect themselves, and what we can do to escape this trap."

To protect yourself, stop living for sales.
St..."

So your suggestion is to give up and stop publishing?

Davide wrote:  "So your suggestion is to give up and stop publishing?"


No.  I describe writing for its own sake.
I mention it as a working solution.
That is not the same as a recommendation.

The artist Claude Monet said art is but a dim light on the horizon.
I have always liked that. Now I find myself at an age and at a time that makes me wonder if I can do anything about anything.
And although there are plenty of things that could be made better in today’s world, there’s not much I can do about any of them. At least that’s what I have been telling myself.

And so, I try my hand at art and writing. But I find that in today’s world where there seems to be too much of everything, the things I write and the things I paint remain only dim lights on the horizon.
But if that is all I can do, then do it I will.

So, far I have left two dim lights on the horizon. Not because I expect that light to be noticed and because of that become brighter. Not because I expect it to change the world.
But because I can.

Every day, people write books that may never be read. They create paintings that may never hang on a wall. They compose songs that may never be heard. They spend years creating something without ever knowing whether another soul will find it.
From a distance, that can seem sad. But maybe that’s not the point. The purpose of art is not to illuminate the entire landscape.
Its purpose is simply to place a small light on the horizon.
A signal.
A reminder.
A possibility.
And now and then, someone wandering through the darkness will notice that light. Not everyone. Maybe only one person. Maybe only for a moment. But they see it. And something inside them resonates. Fragments from stories. Questions without answers.
Thoughts that have followed me through the years.

I don't know who will see them or if anyone will see them. I don't know what they will mean to anyone. But if one of them helps someone find their way through a long dark night, then that is enough. So, when things get dark, look toward a distant light, perhaps someone, somewhere, left it there for you.

Keep writing and maybe you will be someone's light.

A little melancholy but with enough encouragement to make us perevere with our work.

Beth wrote:  "A little melancholy but with enough encouragement to make us persevere with our work."

Persevere?

Don't need encouragement to persevere.
Opposite problem.
Can't stop.

Howard wrote: "The artist Claude Monet said art is but a dim light on the horizon.
I have always liked that. Now I find myself at an age and at a time that makes me wonder if I can do anything about anything.
And..."

Thank you Howard. I resonate completely with your words!
And yet, I am still undecided in terms of whether I should proactively help find that tiny light that I was inspired to create, and in that case how I might do that without pushing (them or me).

Beth wrote: "A little melancholy but with enough encouragement to make us perevere with our work."

Yes. Sometimes, that is needed.

For me, the hardest part was publishing my first book and telling people: “Yes, I wrote a book.”
It feels almost like standing naked in front of everyone. No matter what kind of book it is, you are showing people something that came from inside you — your thoughts, fears, questions, and imagination.
The silence can be difficult. It is hard when there are no reviews, and it is also hard when a negative rating appears without any explanation. But then, somewhere on the other side of the world, someone reads your story. Someone enters the world you created. Maybe one thought, one scene, or one sentence stays with them.
Even one such reader can make the writing worthwhile.
In my case, I often write at night, after my wife and I put our two small children to bed. It is tiring, but moments like that give me strength to continue.
I think strength is not about never falling. Everyone falls. Strength is getting up again after failure, silence, disappointment, or doubt.
So I wish strength to all authors here. And to all readers — thank you for existing, for reading, and for sometimes giving indie authors a chance, not only the famous names and bestsellers.

Davide wrote: "Writing a book is hard work. It requires several months of study and research just to begin structuring the project. It also requires a financial effort: searching for and buying books that are oft..."
Well, this is a big subject that I have been struggling with also.
Since becoming a member of this site, I have been flooded with "Pay for Book Review" emails. Extortion and death threats. Meanwhile as I try to promote my first book, the rest of this site seems not to notice me at all.
So, the question for me is why the hell am I on a website that feels more toxic and predatory than anything else?
Our purpose as writers is to create worlds and characters for others to enjoy. That can't happen when some rando with a VPN is IP hopping for the sole purpose to send death threats and threaten to take your published work and have an AI rewrite it so they can republish it on Amazon, with the end goal of getting you banned from their site.
I can honestly say that a lot of writers have abandoned this site to leave it to the readers. Why? To get rid of the negativity in their lives. It's hard to completely commit to writing a book when the thought of death threats are on the perimiter of their imaginations.
At the time of writing this I am also contemplating deleting my account unless some drastic changes happen to protect the members.

Robert Firlotte wrote:  "... Extortion and death threats ..."

Death threats are harmless expressions of scammer culture.
It's just their way of letting us know that they really do care.
They've applied to be recognized as a marginalized group.
I'm sure we'll all be more understanding after that goes through.

I'm so sorry to hear about your experiences with scammers. My inbox too is being flooded by false review/promotion offers. Fortunately they all go to the spam folder. I don't read them and I certainly don't respond to them.

Goodreads has potential, and it's very easy to drown here and waste our precious writing time. Still, for some reason I'm giving it another try after having given up on it a while ago. I'm just trying to distill what works (actual reviews on the site, and some meaningful connections) and not engage in the rest....

Halina wrote: "Goodreads has potential, and it's very easy to drown here and waste our precious writing time. Still, for some reason I'm giving it another try after having given up on it a while ago. I'm just trying to distill what works (actual reviews on the site, and some meaningful connections) and not engage in the rest....

That parallels my own experience(s) here rather well. Trying to help where I can, finding folks to engage with as a reader and a writer, ignoring the endless flood of poorly written death threats and scam attempts---what Goodreads has become (for authors, anyway) is breathtakingly bad.

It's easier/better for readers. I try to remind myself every time I come here that Goodreads exists to serve its readers, not its authors. Sometimes, that helps.

But what has helped more, much more, is the connections I make here. They may be brief, but they're moments of solidarity and sibling-hood that somehow make the rest of it bearable.

There are good, kind, supportive people here. A lot of the time, theyre just overshadowed, if not outnumbered, by the scammers.

Stay strong. Keep writing. This place needs your voice, too. 😊

“It was a great time and nothing else mattered, especially the challenges his sisters faced. It’s moments like those when it’s easy to forget that bad walks with good in this life. That some chance event or a choice we make, or a fate we are given to endure, decides which of those; bad or good, walks with us. And so it was, just by chance, he stepped one step too far backwards at the front of the wagon and in that instant, everything went from good to bad.”

This passage sticks with me.

"It's moments like those when it's easy to forget that bad walks with good in this life."

Not because of the wagon. Not because of the fall. But because of how quickly good can become bad. One step. One choice. One accident. One diagnosis. One malicious post on a community chat.
One moment we're enjoying the interaction and the next, we're learning something we never wanted to know.

Perhaps that's why it's important to also remember that just as bad walks with good; good walks with bad in this life. And neither one stays forever.

When the noise around you gets loud, turn to the quiet inside.
There is good there in most of us. Look for it. Write about it.