Haters Gonna Hate (but you don’t have to)
By Bryn Greenwood | October 3, 2017 |
Heads up, WU’ers: Bryn Greenwood‘s bestselling novel All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is available in paperback today! All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, was named Book of the Month Club 2016 Book of the Year, and took second place in Goodreads’ ‘Best Fiction of 2016’ contest.
We’re so glad Bryn’s with us today to share with us how she handles negative reader feedback about her intensely human and controversial book, and why. Be sure to check out her bio box for links to her website and social media accounts, to learn more about All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.
Haters Gonna Hate (but you don’t have to)
It’s funny but my fan mail & my hate mail almost always start out the same way. The subject line is usually either “Your book” or the actual title of my most recent novel. The first line of the message is also the same, “I just finished reading your novel All the Ugly and a Wonderful Things and …” There is so much hanging on the words that follow that and. The next words decide whether I hit Reply or Delete. It’s one or the other, because people don’t go to the trouble of tracking down my email address unless they feel strongly about my book.
I always reply to fan mail and I always delete hate mail. Why? Because there is no universe in which replying to hate mail will have a positive outcome. The people who email me to say “You’re a disgusting human and probably a pedophile,” are not interested in having a conversation with me. They’re aiming for the email equivalent of a drive-by shooting. Inflict maximum damage and move on. They don’t want me to talk them around and, if they’ve read my book, they’ve already read the most compelling things I have to say on the subject.
On my most generous days, I suspect the people who send me hate mail just want to vent what’s inside them: hurt, fear, outrage, a sense of moral superiority. On my worst days, I wonder if they hope that their email telling me I’m glorifying child rape will be the one that finally convinces me to kill myself, or at least pull the book from publication and spend the rest of my days on earth tracking down every last errant copy so it can meet its proper fate on a bonfire. (I’m not making this up. I get emails like this. Or I assume these emails still contain this invective. Honestly, I haven’t read past the first sentence in a long time.) I also get emails from polite people who simply really hate my book. Because those emails are indistinguishable from the vituperative ones in the first sentence, even the polite ones get deleted.
Why do I tell you all this? To scare you away from writing that shocking and controversial novel that’s been brewing in the back of your head? To tell you, as if you don’t know, that the world is full of people who don’t agree with you?
No, I’m sharing the details of my regular deluge of hate mail to caution you that if by chance or by design you produce a novel that touches upon controversial or troubling issues, you will need to gird your loins for readers’ reactions when it’s published. You will need to decide upon your rules of engagement long before the ARCs go out.
For people who write to shock or titillate the risk of hate mail is likely irrelevant. It may even be the goal. But seeking sensationalism will put you in the uncomfortable position of being associated with a story line or theme that isn’t built of your own sinew and bone. There will be no hot ember of certainty in your breast that you wrote this story for the people who see themselves in it. It’s why I wrote this most-hated of my novels. I wanted to tell a story that reflected my personal experiences, and so my hate mail is simultaneously deeply personal and bearable.
I have a mantra I repeat to myself on a daily basis:
A beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people and the hard-won relationship that elevates them above the Midwestern meth lab backdrop of their lives. When tragedy rips Wavy’s family apart, a well-meaning aunt steps in, and what is beautiful to Wavy looks ugly under the scrutiny of the outside world. A powerful novel you won’t soon forget, Bryn Greenwood’s All the Ugly and Wonderful Things challenges all we know and believe about love.
Not every book is for everybody. I use it to help me accept that readers are allowed to be angry with me, and I’m allowed to decline to absorb their anger. We are in different spheres, drawn to different stories, guided by different stars.
The reality is that dealing with angry readers often means not dealing with them at all. Discretion being the better part of valor, and all that. After more than a year doing this, it’s the method I recommend. I delete hate mail. I avoid negative reviews. I don’t respond to taunting or harassment on social media, though I’ve been known to subtweet, as one does. I write essays and blog posts that reframe the issue on my terms. I aim to control my end of the conversation without going on the defensive or the offensive, and without personally calling out readers who disagree with me. I remind myself that the book is what I wanted to say, and I got to say it.
While you may never get hate mail, if you pursue a publishing career, I guarantee at some point, somebody will say something unpleasant about your book on social media and, for reasons known only to them, they will feel the need to tag you. At that moment, I hope you’ll remember that your book is your statement. You don’t have to be a silent martyr, but you also don’t have to respond directly. You can untag yourself. You can mute the conversation. You can block the person, if necessary. You can click delete with a steady hand.
Thoughts on negative reader feedback? The floor is yours.
BRYN GREENWOOD (she/her) is a fourth-generation Kansan, one of seven sisters, and the daughter of a mostly reformed drug dealer. She is the NYT bestselling author of The Reckless Oath We Made, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, Last Will, and Lie Lay Lain. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas.
Writing from a personal place means that people will also connect to your story personally. Their real lives and your fiction commingle. That’s supposed to happen. We want it to happen.
We want readers to get involved.
In real life, the step after *feeling* involved is *getting* involved. Level one is offering advice. If you should have a medical issue or trouble in your marriage, say, friends step forward. That’s nice. It can be helpful.
When friends listen, it helps. When friends share what worked for them, that’s thoughtful. When friends try to tell you what to do, though, they are beginning to project themselves on to you. People who try to fix you are really are trying to fix themselves.
Thus, Bryn, you’re right. Hate mail says more about the sender than about you. Thing is, it also says that your story has done what it was supposed to do. It got people involved. It feels real. People connected.
Hate mail isn’t good or welcome, but it is a measure of your power. Delete them, of course, but why not also count them? Every mean missive is another human who could not help but commingle your story with theirs.
Not that I’m telling you what to do, naturally. Just offering a thought. Ugly can be wonderful. Great post, thanks.
It’s true. From my other mail, I know that my story connected with a lot of people personally. That makes it all worth it.
Unfortunately, based on the woefully inaccurate notions about my book, I know that many of my haters haven’t even read it. They just heard something about it. So I’m not sure that counts as commingling. ;)
(And for the purposes of this post, I simplified my process. All the hate mail gets forwarded to a different email account & then deleted from my email. For legal & safety purposes, I keep it all. In case one of the people who hopes I get raped or murdered decides to take action.)
Sheesh. Sorry you must take precautions. What a hassle.
An agent on my staff once received repetitive death threats and referred the case to the FBI. They were able to source the e-mails and they stopped.
A lot of mentally unbalanced, untreated people out there. What a world.
I’m sorry about the hate mail Bryn. I’d ignore it too, esp. if it’s an ad hominem attack. But Don is right–it says a lot to the power of your story.
Sadly they mostly are ad hominem attacks. I’ve had some excellent discussions with people who have complicated thoughts on my book. Those are good and very different from hate mail.
I see a drawback to this approach.
When you ignore what people who disagree with you say, even haters, you sacrifice your ability to understand them.
If you don’t understand them, you can’t reason with them. But worse than that, you lose vital information for fashioning counter-arguments to what they say, therefore decreasing your own ability to prevent them from converting others to their way point of view. To fight hate, you first should understand its roots. You have to listen to the hate, hear it, to do that.
But that’s not the dominant mode today. Instead, many people just shut out views they don’t like, and make no effort to understand the emotions and the logic that underlie those views. So debate gets replaced first by shouting, and then by shouting down.
Reading hate, especially hate directed at yourself, is hard, I know that. But as an author, I view it as grist for the mill. People who hate are wounded, and wounded people are essential elements of our stock in trade.
Sorry if I gave the impression that I’ve never read my hate mail. After all, how could I know I’m getting it, if I didnt read it. That said, I don’t need to read more. I get on average about 10-20 pieces of hate mail every week. After I read the first 100, it was clear that I would be harming myself to read more. After the first 10 or 15 times someone said, “You should just kill yourself” or “I hope you get raped” (as though I haven’t been), I knew all I needed to know about the people who send those emails. I can’t imagine what benefit you think there could be to me to continue reading that.
I respectfully disagree. We all have a limited amount of time and mental bandwidth and need to prioritize what we devote our attention to. Reading vitriol from angry randos on the internet wouldn’t even make it on my list (other people may feel differently). We’re not obligated to engage in every argument we’re invited to, or not invited to in the case of the internet outrage machine.
Edited to add: Bryn said it more eloquently than me.
But how do you know they are an “angry rando” if you don’t read what they wrote? Especially given Bryn’s statement that:
“I also get emails from polite people who simply really hate my book. Because those emails are indistinguishable from the vituperative ones in the first sentence, even the polite ones get deleted.”
She’s advocating not reading comments from even polite people who strongly dislike her book. She can’t know that they have nothing to say, because she doesn’t read the message. Just the fact that they disliked her book is apparently enough for her to decide their opinion was worthless.
That sounds like living in an echo chamber. And if people want to live in echo chambers, they have that right. But does it foster understanding? Does it help an author grow? I say no.
Of course, if money is all an author wants, it’s not a problem. There’s plenty of other people living in echo chambers that will want what they produce. On any point in the political spectrum, on any issue, they’ll pay to have their conclusions reinforced, to be told that they are absolutely and undeniably right. So go, get rich.
Trying to enlighten your readers is passe anyway. So last-century. No one wants that anymore.
I’m not the product. The book is the product. No reader deserves more of me than that. And neither do you.
She’s not living in an echo chamber. She’s already read plenty of negative comments and responded to some of them. She is now moving on.
“Art is not a democracy”, as George R. R. Martin famously says. A book is not politics, there’s no compromise to be found, no mutual understanding being sought. You can’t write one single sentence that doesn’t offend somebody somewhere, always. But the author doesn’t owe anybody anything, he/she has given already. Readers’ opinions don’t count in any way. I think as authors we must be very strict in separating our public and private persons in order to survive. We are of course very much interested in other people’s points of view – but in private only. As authors we need unique singlemindedness. Don’t listen to anybody, ever (except your editor… most of the time).
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Bryn. I might need to draw upon this post in the future. I’m presently writing a book which will only lightly touch upon a controversial subject. From past experience, I know how little it takes to attract offense collectors. (I see that as a different category from the readers who are genuinely hurt and baffled, but who seek understanding.) I’m going to write it anyway, but don’t be surprised if you get a future email from me. “Bryn: I really loved AtUaWT and can you remind me how you maintain your sang froid?”
It’s the dilemma of the age we live in. It’s wonderfully easy for us to access information & connect with people, but it also means that we can become targets for those who disagree with us. Definitely hit me up if you ever need a dose of hate mail sympathy.
Thank you, Bryn, for both the solid advice and for your powerful stand as a storyteller. I’m looking forward to reading your book.
Thank you for reading!
Hi, Bryn.
This post is a perfect example an author who tells a story in a specfic way, with a special voice, and an intended purpose.
Any severe cristism that I’ve received certainly makes me cringe. I never respond unless someone asks me why I wrote something the way I did – which is rare.
Thanks for writing this important post.
It has been my experience, too, that most of those really good “Why did you write this the way you did?” conversations happen in the public eye. My Goodreads question bin is a perfect example of this. I’m always happy to engage with curious or concerned readers in that way. That’s the good dialogue that lets me understand how people different from me process my stories.
Hi Bryn!
Many thanks for sharing this experience and your resolution.
I write to explore ideas, human experience, and philosophical themes.
Though not yet published, in workshops and in on-line critique groups, Matryoschka Girl has had attacks. Despite the fact that the protagonist changes his mind, I’ve been told that it glorifies suicide of returning veterans. I’ve also have had claims that the scenes where the victim is being nurtured back from injuries are only thinly disguised ‘rape fantasy.’
Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are some deeply affected people, who have difficulty dealing with the types of issues that I write about. I wish I could be part of their solution, but I don’t have the life experiences and mind set to write for them.
However, based on my analysis (using a spreadsheet), they are in the small minority. By at least ten to one, they are outnumbered by the ‘I’m offended Trolls.’ These are people who’s life is taken up by trolling the written word, scanning for key words to declare that their psyche has been attacked. To them: “suck it up butter cup. the world is not silver unicorns and people who look and think like you.”
One last note. It took me two years to process being called a ‘virtual rapist.’ (I’ve never written about rape. I can’t say that I will never, but rape or completed suicide doesn’t work with the themes I write about.) Ultimately, I wrote a short story about that writers’ workshop, turning it into a dark humor piece. A friend that it was hilarious, and I was able to move on.
I’ve also had to draw a clear line between disagreeing with/disapproving of my novel and believing it shouldn’t have been written or published. After all, the book reflects my personal experiences. To wish it out of existence is to wish me out of existence. There are people who believe that to write about certain topics is to promote them. Which is odd since I’ve never been accused of glorifying identity theft with my second novel. ;) and I’m not sure how serial killer murder mysteries fit into the theory.
Be bold, Bryn. Be brave. In writing, and in life.
I try to remember, the world can be an ugly place. Often people do far worse than us writer’s could ever make up. Those who don’t want to read about it, are not required to do so.
Great post.
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT (Gift of Travel)
I think also that for some people, they expect fiction to be uplifting in a way the news isn’t. So they don’t want their fiction to tackle terrible things they see on the news. I respect that. Filter what you take in.
Hi, Bryn:
The book that doesn’t piss somebody off isn’t worth reading.
In a PW piece identifying me as an up-and-coming star, my editor remarked, “We have to be careful with David. He’s not for everyone.” I thought to myself: You know, if they slapped that on the cover they’d probably sell more books. In retrospect, I should have said it out loud.
Thanks for the great post.
It’s a complicated situation. You want people to read, but there’s a mixed bag of reward & punishment for being “not for everybody.” I hope on the whole you’ll find it better than not. :)
I think what’s bothering me about this piece is that you close with the question “What are your thoughts on negative reader feedback” but the post deals with “hate mail.” They’re not necessarily the same thing, and I wonder how you distinguish between “I hate your book and I hate you” versus “I thought character X was flat” or “the pacing fell off in the last third” or “all the characters sounded the same” (not criticisms I would level at your book, by the way; I’m glad I read it). On a certain level, it doesn’t matter: it’s not like you’re going to pull the book and rewrite it because Joan from Tucson pointed out a flaw, nor will the complaints of a handful of readers out of thousands change the way you write. But is there anything worthwhile to be mined from “negative reader feedback”?
I get a bit of hate mail through email and some through negative reviews on Amazon. I always keep these words of wisdom in mind:
“It certainly makes no sense to try to convert your biggest critics, because they’ve got a lot at stake in their role of being your critic.”
— Seth Godin
“If you’re not offending a significant
number of readers, your writing is
probably not very original.”
– John Locke
“My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
— Jane Austin
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
— Mark Twain
“A tiger doesn’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.”
— Unknown wise person
“A non-doer is very often a critic — that is, someone who sits back and
watches doers, and then waxes philosophically about how the doers are doing. It’s easy to be a critic,
but being a doer requires effort, risk, and change.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer
“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain … and most fools do.”
— Dale Carnegie
“Criticism is difficult to do well. Recently, we’ve made it super easy for unpaid, untrained, amateur critics to speak up loudly and often. Just because you can hear them doesn’t mean that they know what they’re talking about. Criticism is easy to do, but rarely worth listening to, mostly because it’s so easy to do.”
— Seth Godin
When we stop and think about it many of us have been criticized since our days in the womb. We were made fun of in kindergarten. Slowly it moved up to grade school and so on. There is no time in our lives where someone has not verbally slammed us. For some, it hurts so much that it prevents them from doing what they love while others smile and continue their walk as rotten tomatoes are tossed their way . I’ve learned the best way to annoy your critics, and eventually quiet them, is to continue on your path and improve with each step. It doesn’t hurt to grab a tomato or two and eat them along the way. :)
Thanks for this smart and sensitive post, Bryn. I especially like your tactic of writing essays and blog posts that reframe the issue on your terms.
I braced myself for hate mail when my memoir of being on welfare came out since there’s a lot of hatred and blame out there for “the greedy needy”, but received very little. I’d decided not to respond, which worked well, but some hate mail left me pondering about the story behind those who wrote them. Maybe they’ll show up in a future story.
I haven’t gotten hate mail (as of yet) but I’ve gotten negative reviews, usually in the form of loud and obnoxious rants about how much they hate my protagonist. My editor told me readers often get upset when they connect with the story/characters but cannot imagine themselves behaving or reacting the way the character does.
Upside: Your readers emotionally connected to your writing.
Downside: You get slammed for anything limited-perception readers can’t relate to.
Bryn, I think you’re right to tune out angry hurtful responses. Just like anyone, if writers don’t limit their exposure to negativity, it gets caught in their heads. On constant replay, such negativity could drive a sane person to crawl into a corner and never come out again.
I suppose along with a skill for artfully stringing together words, a writer needs to also be courageous and … “remember that your book is your statement.”
No apology required.
So, I read your book…ha. I did read it and I loved it. I sought it out because I knew what the subject matter was (thank you, Goodreads) and I’d read the reviews, both positive and negative. I thought it was haunting but beautiful. I’m ever so thankful you wrote it. It made me think and cry. I can only hope that if I ever get my own controversial book published, that I touch someone’s soul the way you touched mine. Sometimes negative reviews help. Just to let you know, I never read a review that accused your wonderful writing as being poor. Just that your, ahem, couple was disturbing<–that's what sold it for me.