It’s there every time I sit down to write: the biting voice of a negative reviewer. The accusations that dismiss months of work with a single line of disapproval. I do wonder if reviewers realize how damaging their opinion can be to a writer. There is so much power in words.
Then there’s the flipside: the enthusiastic voice of glowing praise. Positive reviews can have just as much power as negative ones. It’s so important as a writer to read the good and the bad together, rather than to fixate on the negative. How you choose to process these comments can make or break your career.
How easy would it be to give up? That depends on how deep your motivation lies. If writing is at the core of who you are, even if you give up for a spell, you’ll be back at it eventually. That’s because you write for the love of crafting a good story. It has to originate there. It can’t all be about audience approval.
I’ve received my share of mixed reviews on most of my books. At first, the bad ones devastated me. I’d put my soul out there for strangers. Such vulnerability! But oh, the good ones made me glow. What a joy it is to have the inner workings of your mind examined and found worthy!
Now, I’m noticing that the harsh ones don’t sting for as long as they once did. Do they bother me? Sure! I don’t know if I’ll ever get to a point where they won’t, and that’s probably a good thing. I listen, even when it hurts. I become conscious of whatever they point out to me, and if it’s something I can work on, I do. There are occasions in which I totally disagree with what they say and it doesn’t even make sense, such as when they fail to read the book description before purchasing and then accuse it of being the genre that it is. I have to be amused by those and move on, for they merely mean I’ve achieved my categorization.
I’m going to continue in my craft. I can only write what I love, what sounds beautiful to me, what I’d like to read. If that doesn’t resonate with some, then so be it. I write for the ones to whom my soul speaks. They are worth any unpleasantness I encounter along the way.