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2009 has been a busy year for aggrieved authors.
This summer, Alice Hoffman infamously lashed out on Twitter at Boston Globe critic Robert Silman, who had given her novel a lukewarm review. Hoffman called Silman “a moron,” and added, “Now any idiot can be a critic.”
A few weeks later, Alain de Botton responded to a negative review by commenting on the reviewer’s blog: “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.”
In October, Maurie Sendak, responding to concerns that Where the Wild Things Are may be too scary for children, told worried parents to “go to hell.”
And last month, a kerfuffle erupted on the Amazon page for romance author Candace Sams’ novel, Electra Galaxy’s Mr. Interstellar Feller. Negative reviewers were attacked by a user called NiteflyrOne, who was soon exposed to be Candace Sams herself. After 15 pages of back-and-forth rancor (most of which has been deleted by Amazon), Sams threatened to report everyone to the FBI.
Although these sort of sophomoric responses baffle me–as writers, aren’t we trained to communicate our thoughts rationally, preferably after many revisions?–I can understand where they’re coming from.
Dealing with negative criticism requires separating the art from the artist, of recognizing the enigmatic way that art tends to take on a life of its own, distinct from its creator. But sometimes it can be a struggle to accept this. In a recent essay on The Nervous Breakdown, author Ronlyn Domingue eloquently describes such a struggle after receiving a nasty review of her novel The Mercy of Thin Air in The New York Times Book Review:
My first novel is an extension of me. It reveals a few personal beliefs and unanswered questions, some nameable, some that remain ambiguous or unconscious. [...] The Mercy of Thin Air shares my lifeblood as much as any organ or limb. It is not a fallen hair, a trimmed fingernail. The word-made-flesh has a spine holding it together. My reaction to the bad review was a feeling of negation, that what I wrote, even I, didn’t matter. [...] My work—therefore, I—was unoriginal, talentless, ridiculous.
Time and again I’ve been told that writing, just like any other creative profession, requires a thick skin. You will receive negative criticism throughout your career, no matter how talented you may be, and the best way to deal with it is to just ignore it. Don’t let it get to you by simply not letting it in in the first place. Perhaps if Hoffman, de Botton, Sendak, and Sams had all followed this advice, they might not have lashed out and therefore spared themselves the ensuing embarrassment.
A former writing professor of mine, Dave King, once recounted to me and my classmates his experiences with negative reactions to a particularly racy scene in his novel The Ha-Ha. The scene constituted less than an entire page, but still he was deluged with angry letters. One reader even tore the page in question out of the book and mailed it to him, with a note that said something to the effect of, “This is crass and offensive–I’ll keep the rest of the book, and you can keep this.” In opposition to everything I’d ever learned about dealing with negative criticism, King responded to the reader with a thoughtful letter, which detailed why the controversial scene was indeed necessary to the story. The reader wrote back and–to both King’s surprise and my own–apologized.
So maybe the choice to ignore negative criticism is not the answer. Ronlyn Domingue comes to the same conclusion:
Although the advice to have a thick skin was well-meant, it is emotionally dishonest. Sharing one’s writing is a naked act not intended for the meek. Harsh words can—and sometimes do—undermine the most confident, successful writers. It’s human. It’s okay. It will pass. Now, my guidance to myself, and others, is to have a permeable skin, one that doesn’t resist or trap the good or the bad. Reviews, critiques, comments come in, then move on. Then there’s space, inside and out, for something new.
I like this. I’m also fond of the idea of using negative criticism as a means to continue learning and growing as a writer. If you’re going to receive a negative review, you might as well make the best of it.
And for those who simply cannot resist the desire to respond to negative criticism, here are some tips: do not threaten to report your negative reviewers to the FBI, as Sams did. Do not wish them ill will for the rest of their lives, as de Botton did. You’re going to come off, as one blogger put it, as “big ole batshit crazy.” Instead, follow King’s lead. Be considerate and rational, and if it takes a night’s rest or a yoga session to ensure you’ve reached that emotional state, then get your body into that Downward Facing Dog. Your career (and reputation) will thank you.
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You guys are just getting to this, huh?
I think the thick skin rule is one most authors should follow, because half the time authors haven’t a clue how to properly respond to negative comments. If you can’t act like a professional, then you haven’t any business being among professionals. The problem with Sams and others is precisely that they don’t act like professionals. They flip out. They have their little WTF moments and it’s like a switch goes off. Maybe that would have been curious and redeeming stuff in the 1950s, but these days, it’s not…it makes you look like an asshat.
So, the rule for me is this: if you don’t know how to respond properly, then don’t.
I’m glad you ended up where you did by the end of this post. Yes, not letting the bastards wear you down is definitely a rule worth repeating. However, if you insist on tuning out every bad review, how honest is it to revel in the good ones? It’s all part of the mix, and there are definitely times when a negative comment can prompt more introspection and learning than a pat on the back. The secret, it seems, is to neither pay attention to nor become one of the batshit crazies.
Bill: I completely agree with you there. Writers should definitely pay attention to negative reviews as well as good reviews. You can learn a lot from negative reviews (at least from good negative reviews, as confusing as that sounds). That’s not always the case, obviously, but sometimes it is.
I wrote what I felt was a balanced review of a book on my blog this year, and the author wrote me a looong letter, not only refuting the one negative point I had made, but also telling me which parts of the book I should have featured. The tone of the email was so defensive and desperate that it didn’t serve the author well at all. I have to admit, the email made me feel bad, even though I didn’t think I had written a bad review. I’m pretty sure she didn’t glean anything about her writing from this review, because she was so wrapped up in refuting it. And therein lies the problem.
True. And awkward for you. Writers (as well as filmmakers, musicians, etc) who insist on refuting criticisms point by point tend to drive me a little bonkers; it’s the writer’s responsibility to make sure the work stands on its own, and not the reader’s fault for “not getting it.”
Hello, Julia, and thanks for the mention! Actually, the guy wrote something like, “I’m sending you the page because I won’t have it in my house, and then I’m going to throw the book away because no one wants a book with a page torn out.” Still, you had the general idea.
But the thing that bugged me (and the reason I wrote back) is that the reader seemed to think I’d made some kind of mistake. That the cunnilingus had just slipped into my novel while I wasn’t paying attention; as if I’d gone out with my shirt on backwards or my fly unzipped, and this was the result. It was really such a scold. And this is the thing that enrages us, I think: the suggestion on the part of readers that if we’d only been using our noggins we’d have done a neater, more polite and civilized job.
That’s the point I made to the guy who wrote to complain. Basically: you have the right not to like the passage, but please don’t assume I didn’t give it serious thought. I do think the reading experience gets a little richer if we ask ourselves why the writer employed a particular strategy before rejecting the strategy out of hand, and I find the thumbs up/thumbs down approach a bit of a dead end.
Whew! Sorry to be so long-winded. Anyway, Julia, happy new year to you and to all the readers of Lit Drift. You’ve built a great site.
DK
Hi Dave–thanks for stopping by!
What you said here:
is a good point. It can be easy for readers to drop the ball as well, and it’s funny how often during the reading experience logical thought seems to be forgotten. I’m guilty of this as well–there have been some books about which I was convinced the writer had fallen asleep halfway through and their fingers just continued typing. How simple it is to forget that someone slaved over a book for years and scrutinized every page several times over, and to instead chalk it all up to the writer, as you put it, not using his or her noggin.