Don't Take Criticism From People You Wouldn't Go To For Advice

It takes a massive amount of energy, drive, vision, and focus in order to translate any work of fiction from the electrical impulses in your skull jelly to words on a page. And after sweating through that slog to make something out of nothing, you'd think that we'd be protective as hell of all that hard work.

But so many of us are willing to put our work into major surgery at the first sign that someone doesn't love it as much as we do... and we honestly need to stop that.

Seriously, you made it, stand by it!

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Criticism is Everywhere (Don't Take It All Home With You)

If you're a creator, then you're going to get criticism. Art is completely subjective, and even if you have experience, talent, skill, a unique idea, and you polish it to a mirror shine, there's always going to be someone who tells you your work is shit. Sometimes they'll elaborate, and tell you all the things they didn't like about it. Sometimes they'll just yell obscenities in text, and give you a 1 star rating.

There are, however, a few important things you should ask yourself when criticism comes your way. Some of these include:

- Is It Specific?: Anyone can say your book sucks, or they hate your work... but do they know anything about it, or are they just shouting about something they haven't even read?

- Is It In Bounds?: If someone criticizes your book about vampires in a submarine for getting submarine physics and names wrong, that's fair. If they're mad your vampires don't work the same as vampires in a different series, less so.

- Is It In Good Faith?: This can be hard to tell at a glance, but there's a lot of bad faith criticism out there. Learning to recognize this helps a great deal, because people who aren't engaging with you in good faith aren't people you should pay attention to.

Perhaps the most important question you should ask yourself, though, is whether the person offering you criticism is a person you trust. Do you know their bona fides, and do their words carry weight with you? Or are they just some random person who has decided you need to hear their opinion about your work?

You don't know me, but let me tell you all about why you're shit.

You should, generally speaking, be polite to people whenever you can. However, if the criticism is coming from people who aren't in your audience, and who don't have any experience with telling stories or writing books, it's okay not to take their words to heart.

If someone who only reads sci fi doesn't like your sword and sorcery novel, why do you care? They've just told you they aren't in your target audience. If someone tells you they aren't a writer, but then they try to tell you how to write, isn't that like someone with zero knowledge about cars telling their mechanic what to do? It seems obvious, but we often let criticism right past our front gates, and it can make us second-guess so much of our work, and try to change it to satisfy the maximum number of people.

You're never really immune to this, either.

Consider this audio version of my short story Gav and Bob, Part 5: Faith and Martyrs. Going through the comments, there are a lot of folks who really liked it. Some commenters said it made them cry, while others were excited to hear what became of Gav and the other characters afterward. But out of those 731 comments, there were a few who dissented. Some folks claimed this was just fan service, and it was a pointless addition to the story. Some thought it should have had more action, or focused more on Gav and the others fighting the Emperor's foes as they had in previous chapters/installments. However, I made myself back up, and really look at the totality of what I was facing.

In addition to those 731 comments (a few of which were negative), there were 4.3 thousand upvotes on this video! Not only that, but at time of writing it's got over 59,000 views, which for something that involves my work is pretty impressive overall.

Taking the metrics as a whole, that's a pretty overwhelmingly positive response to the story... but even with that many people and factors in favor of the thing I made, the few objections and criticisms still got through. And I had to remind myself that with that many people clearly enjoying the thing I made, I should try to focus on the approval rather than the dissenting voices. Especially since none of those voices came from people who'd written for the Black Library, or even other prominent 40K fan channels. They were just a handful of folks out of thousands who didn't like what I'd made.

And that's just the cost of doing of business.

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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"Ignoring The Haters" or "The Zen of Not Giving A Damn"

I've been running this blog, along with my gaming blog Improved Initiative, for a few years now. I've published a dozen short stories, been part of at least as many RPG books, and I've got an archive of articles I've set up on the side of the information superhighway over the years. Sometimes, when I'm lucky, people will like and share that content on their social media. A few kind folks will leave comments telling me they like my stuff, and they hope I keep up the good work. But they are in the minority to the negative feedback I tend to get.

Now, of the negative feedback, some of it is valid. People who mention that I missed an errata in the rules, or who point out there's a typo in a subheading, are informing me of genuine errors in my work. Even when that kind of feedback feels snide or aggressive, it still has value because it points out a problem that needs to be fixed. There is another kind of negative feedback I get, though, and anyone who's ever put themselves and their work out there has likely experienced it too.

It looks something like this...

STOP MAKING THINGS!

While cute, this cat represents the massing army of the haters that is constantly recruiting from all corners of the Internet. Some of them hate you, specifically, and they dislike anything you do. Others dislike the idea of what you do, and disagree with your take on a subject, your treatment of material, or just your general stance on things. Then there are haters who just hate, and because you're not on the list of things they like, they hate you on principle. It's not even personal. It's just that in the coin-toss of like/hate, you came up tails.

That can get discouraging, after a while. Especially when it seems like no matter what you write, there's this chorus of naysayers getting ready to shout you down. Fortunately, there's a simple way for you to keep doing what you're doing, and to shed all those haters like a duck sheds water.

Stop giving a damn.

It's Almost That Simple, Actually

You've probably heard this same advice ever since you were little, and someone said something mean to you. Upset, you went to find some comfort. That was when your parent, older sibling, or someone you trusted put their hands on your shoulders, looked you in the eyes, and gave you the key to living a life of zen.

"It doesn't matter if he called you an idiot. He's a dick, just ignore him."

Who cares what he said about your coat. It's warm and comfy, isn't it?

Before you take anyone's words to heart, give those words a simple test. Is there any legitimate criticism within this opinion? Did you misquote a source, incorrectly label the creator of an image, engage in a caricature of a particular group, or present a theory that had been disproven? Or is the person shouting at you simply dressing up, "I don't like what you did!" in different clothes.

Because if they don't like what you're doing, that's fine. They don't have to like it. They also don't have to engage with you, or your work. The door is right behind them. They're free to keep on scrolling, and ignore your happy ass if they so choose.

Listen to Your Numbers

You can have a hundred good reviews, but the five negative ones you got are the ones that will stick with you. You might have an entire comment section full of flame wars and hate, but when you check your traffic and follower count you see that both have gone up substantially. You might get a bunch of shares where people tag your book, or article, as the biggest piece of crap they've ever seen... but despite that, your sales figures are surging.

Numbers don't lie... or have opinions.

While you shouldn't ignore criticism entirely, especially if it does point out genuine flaws in your work that should be fixed, it's important not to get so sidetracked by other people's feelings, or their personal dislike of your style, tone, subject matter, etc. that you lose sight of the metrics that can actually tell you if you're making progress. Because it is not your job to win over the haters, whatever their beef with your work is. Your job is to find your audience, and to give them more of what they want.

Lastly, remember this. Anyone can complain. It takes exactly zero effort to talk about how bad this novel was, or how boring and played-out that series of articles is. It takes work to make something that's better. So, if the criticism is coming from someone who is a creator, and whose work and results you know and respect, that might be worth listening to. If it's coming from Joe-schmo, sitting in his boxers and ranting on Facebook about how unimpressed he is by your work, let him rant. It isn't worth the amount of time it would take you to fire a synapse and raise your middle finger.

Also, because it should be comforting, hate can also make you a lot of money. More on that in How To Make Money As A Writer (By Embracing Your Inner Troll), if you're curious.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing topic. Hopefully some folks out there have found it interesting, and possibly useful. If you want to keep up-to-date on all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. And if you'd like to help support me and my work, then head on over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron. All I ask is $1 a month as a donation, and for that you get both my undying gratitude, as well as some free books!