About a year ago, I wrote this post on feelings and the problem when our expressing of them steps over a line. It's still one of my most 'popular' posts, traffic-wise. This year, there's a similar firestorm happening, but in the reverse. It started with this article (that's a no-traffic link, btw) from an author who, frankly, stepped over the line. Way WAY over the line.
As authors, we write books, and if we're brave and crazy enough, we share them with the world. And here's the thing: the world is allowed to hate them. Publicly and loudly. That's just how it is. Readers are perfectly within their rights to hate every single word of what they just read and, also, to tell people about it. Know what else? So long as they're not actively threatening or condemning the person, the one who wrote the words they hated, readers can express their hatred for a book however they want. Really. However they want. With swears, with anger, with gifs and pictures which may or may not be rude.
Negative reviews are a bummer when it's your book on the receiving end, but that's part of this deal. Not everyone will love your book. Not everyone will be nice about it either. I don't love every book I read. And while I'd not personally choose to write an angry or caustic review, I respect a reader's right to do so.
There are many ways to deal with the pain of negative reviews. Cry, email friends, look at puppy pictures, bake, exercise, channel your emotions into something productive, like more writing. Just for a few examples. The top best way would be not to read reviews at all. Now that takes a willpower I don't possess, though I wish I did. So I do read reviews, even the negative ones. (I posit it's just as bad to read only positive reviews, but that's an entirely different issue.) I also respect an author's right to engage a critic, respectfully and through established channels, though I don't recommend it.
What's never, ever, ever, ever an okay way to deal with anything, including negative reviews?
Stalking someone.
Seriously, what this author did is not okay. It is not even sane.
I'm equally horrified that a major news outlet gave her a platform to flaunt the insanity and even, just as ludicrously, gain (some) support for it.
Unlike my post a year ago, there is no complexity about this issue. None, zero, not a smidge. There is no gray here whatsoever.
Stalking a reviewer--anyone--is not okay. Not if you meant no harm, not if you just wanted to talk, not even if you wanted to thank them or give them a cake. Just no.
To all the bloggers and reviewers out there, no matter if you loved or passionately hated my books: thank you. I'm so desperately sorry that today some of you have reason to feel afraid.
Showing posts with label conflict. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conflict. Show all posts
October 24, 2013
On feelings, and expressing them, and being stuck between being a writer and a reader
There’s a book firestorm happening this week around a conclusion to an incredibly popular series that was incredibly unsatisfying to a large portion of an already huge group of readers.
That’s a tough place to be, and that’s an understatement.
As an author, this is an intensely uncomfortable situation to watch. It is. I won’t pretend otherwise. Because here are two things that are okay:
1. To write the book you want to write
2. To hate the book you just read
It takes courage to write an ending/plot point/whatever that feels right to you, but that you know will be unpopular. And you do know. Writers deal in emotions. We know. There will be backlash. It takes fortitude to deal with that as well.
It’s gut-punchingly terrible to read a book you wanted to love with characters you already love and be dissatisfied. The worst. Even worse than the worst when you throw in lengthy anticipation and having paid for something you end up hating. Readers know this, and since writers tend also to be readers, we know that too.
There’s not really a way to reconcile those two things. It’s tricky, this situation, so so tricky. There are emotions and expectations and feelings involved. There’s the freedom—necessity—for artists to take risks and follow their vision. There’s the extra-tricky complication of the fact that this art isn’t free—it’s sold to readers for cash money.
Because this situation has all these variables that are at odds with each other but also not wrong, it inevitably leads to some wrongness. Here are two things that are not okay:
1. Threatening a person
2. Denigrating a person
Except I don’t think rational people do those things. But humans, even ones who are generally good and nice and any number of positive traits, aren’t always rational. When emotions—and what are fandoms or content creators but people with intense emotions and investment in a thing?—are involved, you’re even more likely to encounter irrationality. This is not an excuse. It’s just a fact. There will be irrationality. On BOTH sides, which just fuels more irrationality until the situation devolves into inevitable ugliness. No one enjoys this, yet it happens again and again. Because feelings. It all comes back to feelings.
But what to do? I don’t know. There is not a satisfying ending to this situation. Authors want fans and to be true to ourselves. Readers want to be surprised and to be satisfied. These two and four things won’t always come together. There's so much more, too, so many nuances I haven't mentioned, that we could talk about in relation to this conundrum.
I guess the bottom line is to remember we’re all people, writers and readers. Have feelings, intense ones, be they good or bad. Express them even. But not with threats and/or insults directed at people. Please.
That’s a tough place to be, and that’s an understatement.
As an author, this is an intensely uncomfortable situation to watch. It is. I won’t pretend otherwise. Because here are two things that are okay:
1. To write the book you want to write
2. To hate the book you just read
It takes courage to write an ending/plot point/whatever that feels right to you, but that you know will be unpopular. And you do know. Writers deal in emotions. We know. There will be backlash. It takes fortitude to deal with that as well.
It’s gut-punchingly terrible to read a book you wanted to love with characters you already love and be dissatisfied. The worst. Even worse than the worst when you throw in lengthy anticipation and having paid for something you end up hating. Readers know this, and since writers tend also to be readers, we know that too.
There’s not really a way to reconcile those two things. It’s tricky, this situation, so so tricky. There are emotions and expectations and feelings involved. There’s the freedom—necessity—for artists to take risks and follow their vision. There’s the extra-tricky complication of the fact that this art isn’t free—it’s sold to readers for cash money.
Because this situation has all these variables that are at odds with each other but also not wrong, it inevitably leads to some wrongness. Here are two things that are not okay:
1. Threatening a person
2. Denigrating a person
Except I don’t think rational people do those things. But humans, even ones who are generally good and nice and any number of positive traits, aren’t always rational. When emotions—and what are fandoms or content creators but people with intense emotions and investment in a thing?—are involved, you’re even more likely to encounter irrationality. This is not an excuse. It’s just a fact. There will be irrationality. On BOTH sides, which just fuels more irrationality until the situation devolves into inevitable ugliness. No one enjoys this, yet it happens again and again. Because feelings. It all comes back to feelings.
But what to do? I don’t know. There is not a satisfying ending to this situation. Authors want fans and to be true to ourselves. Readers want to be surprised and to be satisfied. These two and four things won’t always come together. There's so much more, too, so many nuances I haven't mentioned, that we could talk about in relation to this conundrum.
I guess the bottom line is to remember we’re all people, writers and readers. Have feelings, intense ones, be they good or bad. Express them even. But not with threats and/or insults directed at people. Please.
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