How To Deal With Negative Feedback

As a writer I usually enjoy only positive feedback from my stories when I get it. But there are occasions when I get those emails or feedbacks that say, “You suck,” or “You are one twisted sick fucker and everything you write is a piece of shit and you’re going to burn in hell.” Now the question is how does one react to this.

I personally find myself growing angry every time I read one of those type of feedbacks. Simply because it is normally done anonymously and the person never has the nerve to put their name on it. Then I find myself chuckling because hey it means they read or at least scrolled to the end of the story to send this.

I try and never send that kind of feedback or if I am going to send negative comments I include positive ones of what an author did right and suggestions on how to improve in my opinion. But what should the average joe that doesn’t have many submissions on here and rarely gets feedback do the first time he receives a negative one.

Well you can do a number of things. First you can simply delete it and chalk it up to some chicken that doesn’t want you to email them back. Secondly, you can just laugh it off and if they provided any constructive criticism take it and learn from it. Maybe they are pointing out something about a style or wording that could help. Also another choice is to just give up writing or strive to do better.

Some people attack the higher ranked stories and send negative feedback to make themselves feel better. Making it look like it was a phantom striker and not someone of stature on this site. Others and there are a few out there attack the higher ranking stories because they hate to see anyone succeed. I have no idea if this is an author who just can’t produce anything better than average scores or if it is a rabid fan of one of the better author’s and they are trying to secure a spot for their favorite.

Who knows what leads to this. But if you get negative feedback I suggest you do what I do. I have a separate folder for just those feedbacks and I save them all and go back and look over them when I need a laugh or I get to high and mighty about the work that I am doing and need a reality check. It means someone hates your work and you haven’t succeeded in pleasing everyone so you have to strive a little harder to make them enjoy.

I also like to print the most recent ones off and read them to my significant other and listen to what she thinks. Sometimes she will tell me yes, they are right you screwed that story up by doing this or that. Or she will just let me know that in retrospect I have only gotten ten pieces of hate mail for about every 20 stories. Most of them coming for one story or another. But best of all she will slide over and kiss me and tell me that she loves what I write and since it makes me happy don’t worry about one or two hateful people and think about the many others that send feedback positive and with there names in hope of a response or just letting me know that they loved the work.

I must say one of my greatest pleasures in dealing with negative feedback is to converse with other authors on this site and having a giggle over them. We all get them at least once and it shouldn’t bring anyone down. Even the bible has received negative comments from different fractions over the centuries. So see anyone can find something negative with any work.

But as I said I look through all the positive feedbacks I have saved from my stories here and they outweigh the one or two negatives. I am lucky in the respect that an author I truly admire, is a big fan of my work and never fails to let me know what she thinks of each piece. She has also thrown in her negative comments where she saw something wrong but always in a positive manner.

To her, Maggie thank you for being a constant stable in my education and writing on this site without your positive feedbacks at times I would feel useless. And to all the fans that will send negative or positive feedback for my works this included thank you. I just love those feedbacks.