Dealing with negative book reviews and negative people in general

The topic of negativity came up in some recent Twitter discussions, in particular in regards to negative people who frown upon you creating, like they tell you to stop writing (or painting, filming, sculpting, dancing, singing, insert whatever art you make here) because: 1) You suck at it. 2) You will never get good at it. 3) You can't make money doing it. 4) You're not doing real work like all respectable serious people should do. 5) You need to grow up and stop dreaming. 6) You're wasting your time. 7) Nobody will ever read it (or see, watch, listen, etc.). 8) You don't have the genes for it, the talent for it, the... whatever for it. 9) You will make a fool of yourself. 10) There is no way you can break into the market and get noticed. 11) You don't have time for it. 12) You're a quitter, so you will quit. 13) YOU WILL FAIL. Etc. Etc. Etc. I'm sure you can insert 100+ more things here you heard from people. Same goes for book reviews, if you happen to write a book and get a negative review, strip out all the sophisticated language from it, and the message is the same. YOU SUCK WHY THE FUCK DID YOU WRITE THIS BOOK YOU MORON. Well. I got news for you. I know stuff like this gets your blood boiling, or it renders you helpless, or you start hating yourself, or you get depressed, or you decide to follow their advice and quit trying. DON'T. Because... *drumroll* ...here is how you can forever and ever and ever free yourself from reacting to these negative messages and people who tell you those messages and begin thriving as an artist.

It's not about you. It's about them. So here is one simple fact I picked up from years and years of therapy, years of reading every self-help book there was written (well, not quite, but it felt like it), from studying my own pile of garbage from the past,  from being a mom, and from attempting to rid myself of this reaction to what people tell me and start creating. Here is the thing. Whatever these people say, either about you as an artist or your art, is not about YOU, it's about THEM. Think about it. When you feel bad, what is your first reaction? Or, rather what is your instinctual reaction before the social filter kicks in (that is, if you have one)? What would be a natural reaction of a toddler? Cry. Stomp. Scream. Throw a fit. Why? Cause they feel awful. But what happens? Oh well, other people get a dose of it, right? It ain't pretty, but hey, the toddler feels better! Not fair! Well, now think of a teenager throwing a fit because they want a new coat, iPhone, car, whatever, because some kid at school has it. What do they do? Stomp. Scream. Slam doors. Sound familiar? Good. Now we're getting somewhere. Enter adulthood. We learn to suppress these primitive urges to spill out emotions on the world to get rid of them, but the problem is, those emotions don't go anywhere, they need to get out. There are two things people do, they either 1) turn their pain into art (ENTER YOU) or 2) spill their shit on the world. Wait a minute, you say, how does that work? Oh, it works like this. Just go and pick any negavite book review and read it. Whatever the person says, will tell you what they struggle with or don't understand or don't accept. In other words, they are spilling their pain - on you. Why? Well, maybe their parents never taught them to be nice, never taught them to channel their destructive energy into something positive. Also, because you offered, by publicly displaying your guts, cause that's what a book is, so don't whine now. I had to teach this skill to myself, being nice, as nobody taught me, and I still slip sometimes and act brash toward people, but I also learned to apologize, and I do, and it always makes things better. Anyway, whatever those people say, it not about YOU, it's about THEM. Get it? Tattoo it on the backs of your eyelids, pin it all over the wall, program it into your phone, so next time somebody tells you that you can't write, you know it's not about your writing sucking, it's about them communicating to you their pain of never fulfilling their wish to be an artist. Feeling better? Good. I thought so.

Mirror mirror on the wall... Right. This is all fun and whatnot, but how do you deal with these people when you have to interact with them? I mean, it's one thing staring at the screen after the fact, after the review has been written, or the comment, or whatever. But what if someone tells you negative shit in real life, like face to face? What do you do? How do you deflect it? How do you not react or not let it poison you, destroy you, and make you hate yourself? Well, easy. Mirror it. It's an old therapeutic technique, I think, I read about it somewhere or heard. Anyway, here is how it works. You basically reflect whatever the person does to you, tells you, yells at you, whatever. They might say, you suck at writing. And you say, yeah, that's too bad, I suck at writing. They say, you suck so bad you're a pile of dung. You say, yeah, horrible, isn't it, I'm a pile of dung. Essentially you are refusing to get pulled into the argument, and the person who wants to get their satisfaction out of hurting you gets none. You can do this to online trolls too. I call it, "don't feed the troll". Can't remember who coined this term. Basically, you are okay with someone thinking you suck, because you know that you're awesome, so somebody else's negativity doesn't faze you. You don't get into an argument. Look at this: You suck! No I don't! Yes you do! I do not! You do too! Do not! DO TOO! DO NOT!!! And so it goes. See, you're feeding the troll, that's exactly what the troll wants. Instead, look at this. You suck! Yeah, I know, terrible, isn't it? I said you suck, idiot!!! So sorry you had to repeat this twice to make me listen, see, I'm a horrible listener. You are essentially using humor to not feed the troll, not give them what they are looking for, which is seeing you in pain, because trolls and negative people overall are those people who didn't fully grow up yet, they are still at that toddler level. Causing pain and seeing pain on other's people's faces (or in their online profiles or whatever) gives them a chance to understand what is going on with them. It's normal for a child as part of their development process, it's no longer normal for a healthy adult. To be healthy, you have to be happy. When you're unhappy, you slide back to being a kid, the more pain in you, the farther you go. A typical negative person or troll usually uses bad grammar, is entitled, thinks he or she is the center of the universe, is very narrow minded or not well educated, has a hard time tolerating the brilliance of others, and, above all, is a coward. Sounds pretty childish, doesn't it? But in a way it turns normal childish things from which children learn into these ugly traits adults exhibit. Well, now that you know what it is, it can't bother you anymore, can it? Think of negative people in this way - they're in pain, they need love, they need YOUR love, to feel a little better. If you can, give them love. If not, eliminate them from your life, block them, but don't hurt them back, don't engage, it only makes things worse for everyone. 

No book is perfect for everyone. This you just have to drill into your head. We are all different, very different. On top of it, in different stages of our lives we feel differently, so one book may delight us in our twenties, and gross us out in our thirties, only to delight us again in our sixties. This is why we write books, to share our life stories with each other. A negative review simply means that you haven't touched that person in particular. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Also, remember, it's very easy to tell an artist bad stuff, but it's hard to make art. Those who negatively react to you making art are usually people who don't make any art themselves (there are always exceptions, of course, like old grumpy but brilliant writers who might appear standoffish but really only wish you the best, albeit in their grumpy way because they get to this age when they can't stand stupid shit and are past caring what people think about them - but they're just testing you, silly, to see if you mean business, before they decide to spend time on you). Anyway, I got carried away here. Basically, know that you can't please everyone, not should it be your goal. If you will try to write keeping in mind EVERYONE, I'm sorry, but I can predict that whatever you will write will hardly be any good. You really have to write for one person only, for yourself. It's your story. If you stay true to yourself, guess what, despite the fact that we're all different, there are those of us who have gone through similar stuff, and we want to connect. And now, in the digital age, we can connect like we couldn't before. This way, if you try to be someone you aren't, well, it will reflect poorly on your art. So, be yourself, no matter what anyone says. Who cares what people say. What matters is you are happy when you're in the zone, when you're creating. Whether or not anyone sees it after, or reads it, or experiences, is secondary. The funny part is, it's when you give up with fear of OMG NOBODY WILL EVER READ MY BOOK that you write your best stuff and find your readers. I know from experience.

Let me close it with this. Life is too short to be angry or get worked up over somebody's opinion. You could be hit by a truck tomorrow, or get cancer, or explode in an airplane, or get infected with a deadly virus, or, well, use your imagination. The thing is, you might die tomorrow, or maybe next month, or next year. You think it's so far fetched? Think again. Think about recent deaths around you. Did those people expect them? Probably not. Maybe some did, because of old age or a terminal disease, but most didn't. Do you think those people, if they knew they had very little time left, would've stopped caring what others thought of them and enjoyed the hell out of their last days? I bet they would. Hey, Hollywood capitalized on the idea, producing a bunch of movies on the theme. That tells you something, doesn't it? Also, think about it this way. The energy you will spend agonizing over a negative review or over something negative someone said will burn for nothing. You could've spent that energy creating. So, my advice to you, grow a thick skin and learn not to react. How? If you feel you are easily hurt, get rid of negative people in your life. Until you learn how to deal with them face to face, avoid them, move away, shun them out. STOP ALL CONTACT! Protect your creative energy with zeal. It's your life, and it's up to you how you spend it. That's what I had to do, because I've been abused when growing up and turned into a total lamb when someone yelled at me or said a bad word. It took me years to get to today, and I'm still not quite where I want to be, but, hey, I got better! (And no, I'm not a newt). All right, this is it. Now go, create, draw, make music, film, act, whatever. Go write me a Pulitzer (I actually stole this, it's what my boyfriend tells me when I doubt myself). Love always, Ksenia. xoxo

Does your age affect your writing?

The reason I'm writing this blog post is because one of my readers, Zandile Funde, wrote me this awesome loooong email that was sort of a review of SIREN SUICIDES, sort of a commentary on writing in general, and it had one very important question:

"...the reason I brought up being a student (I'm turning 22 in 2 months) is that earlier this year, you wrote a blog post about how you feel that writing at a young age should rather be avoided (that people should live longer before they decide to write, that's how I understood it). I then pretty much felt as if I were a modern-day Sisyphus, participating in 'futile writing.' It made me stop and think maybe I'm not yet mature enough to be writing at this point because I haven't been through half the ordeals that you have..."

I must apologize to those of you who read that blog post and walked away from it with the impression that just because you're young, you shouldn't be writing. That would be the worst thing to do. What I meant there was what I have heard from other writers and what I have experienced myself, namely, the fact that the more life you have lived, the more stories you have to tell, the deeper they will be. Let me expand on this thought here, and hopefully, if you feel like you're too young to write, or if you're afraid to write because you think people won't take you seriously, you will walk away from this empowered to write, no matter what your age is.  I will sort of break down your life into 4 learning stages that I have heard at some business workshop at some point in my past life, as it was applicable to growing employees, or teaching employees, or some thing like that. Since then I applied this principle to my own life and writing, and it works. Also recently Michael Gruber, my mentor and author of 20+ thrillers, reiterated it in 4 writing workshop concepts of stages every writer has to go through. I will combine the two here.

Stage 1, MADMAN: You don't know that you don't know.  This is the glorious time when you're young, green, naive, have no care in the world, and just jump into things without thinking. Anything is possible. Why? Because you don't know that you don't know. Or, in the writing workshop terms, you're a madman. You just do stuff. Can you write a short story? Oh, that sounds exciting, totally! Can you write a novel? That sounds cool, sure. Do you wanna participate in a flash fiction contest? Of course! Wanna help us write a script for this new amazing sitcom we're trying to produce independently? You got it, I'm in. Basically, you can apply this principle to anything. Remember yourself when you saw a neighbor kid who rode a bike, and you just got your new bike, without training wheels, and you rolled it out and you watch that kid in fascination. It looks so easy, what he does, you decide, you can totally do it. You hop on the bike like that other kid, you pedal, and for a few seconds you're happy, you can do it, yes! Then you crash. BOOM. This is the second stage. (I have to tell you a story. I did this stupid thing not too long ago, a few years ago, actually. I was skiing. I'm not a pro, and I saw those kids jump off a ramp, and I thought, oh, that looks easy. Next thing I know, I go down the ramp, I fly, I fall, and I break my leg. But for a few glorious seconds I was airborne and it was awesome, also, being taken down the mountain on a sled was awesome too.).

Stage 2, CARPENTER: You know that you don't know. Since we're using the biking allegory here, I say, let's continue with it. So, you get up, and you're like, fuck, this hurts! Well, I mean, depending on your age, of course, you might have said something like, ouch, I need a band-aid! Whatever you said, you have just crossed the line. Now you know that you don't know how to bike. It's the same with writing. You start writing a story, a short story or a novel, doesn't matter, and somewhere in the middle, or maybe even somewhere in the very beginning, you get lost, you don't know how to continue, you realize there is more to writing than just writing, you lose the storyline, you're not sure about your characters, it's too much too fast, you get overwhelmed, and you realize that you actually can't write. Not yet. This is the stage where many people quit. DON'T!!! You have to write through this, in order to get to the next stage. This is where age factor comes in. If you've been through life, you've been beaten up by things, you know that giving up is not the choice you can make, you have a certain maturity about it. But when you're younger, you just tend to throw your arms up and yell, FUCK IT! and walk away. I was like that too, I remember I did totally stupid things and gave up on things. For example, I wanted to become a translator at 16, but then my father told me that I would suck at it (despite the fact that I knew German like a native language back then), so I NEVER EVEN TRIED TO APPLY. Yeah, talk about giving up easily. Not now. Now, if you try to sway me from my path, I will plow over you like a bulldozer. The term "carpenter" applies here in the sense that you sweat over little things, because you don't dare think you can build bigger.

Stage 3: ARCHITECT: You don't know that you know. This is a fun stage. Basically, if you have got to the 2nd stage, now you are stubbornly writing a lot of shit. Or, you are stubbornly practicing biking every day, throwing jealous glares at that neighbor kid, pressing your lips together, and trying, and trying, and trying. You fall hard on your ass, you scrape your knees bloody, but that other kid pisses you off so much with his biking skills, that you just want to beat him, you want to be as good as him. You want to bike like a god. So you drag your sorry ass out on the street every day after school. Same with writing. You read something absolutely genius, and you go, man, I will never write as good as this. If you are younger, you tend to get depressed and you again are tempted to give up, but with age and with life you gain this ability to persevere, because you know that nothing good in life comes easy, there is no mom or dad to wash your socks or cook you dinner, you gotta do it yourself, so you persevere. You write, and you write, and you write. Then something magical happens. People who read your stuff (your friends at this stage, or your mom, or writers from your writer's group) start telling you that they like your writing. But you're still in the frame of mind that you don't know shit, so how can they like it? Because, you're getting good. You simply don't know yet that you know (I'm somewhere between this and the carpenter stage, I still doubt myself a lot). So "architect" term doesn't quite apply here, but it also sort of does. You do know what you're doing, and you do it on a big scale, you just haven't accepted it yet.

Stage 4, JUDGE: You know that you know. This is the level that you might reach somewhere down the path of writing 20 novels, or more (I'm guessing, of course). This is when you for the first time see that you can do it, and you know that you can do it. Like that kid with the bike, it's the first time that kid rides and sees that he is better than that other kid, and feels like he can actually do it. It usually takes someone else to point it out, so maybe he goes to a biking competition or something like that, and wins the prize. This is usually attained by senior writers, by people who have lived life and have written a lot. I hope one day to be here, I wonder what it feels like, to know your craft and do it. It must be exhilarating. Or maybe it isn't? Maybe it's the stage when you go like, FUCK IT, I want to try something new now because I know this writing thing inside and out? Stephen King has been announcing his plans for retirement since 2002 and still hasn't quit writing. I just downloaded his latest novel DOCTOR SLEEP, the sequel to THE SHINING. This leads me to believe that once you hit the "judge" stage, you get so happy, that you swim in your own ability to write, you thrive in it. I wonder what that feels like, knowing. I can't imagine. If I will ever get there, I'll let you know.

Now, to close this topic. Age affects your writing not only in the aspect of simple life experience and maturity in the face of failure, but also in the amount of material you can write about. Basically, writing is not about things that you have seen in your life, it's about things you have felt. It doesn't matter if you have traveled the world since age 5, and you are 15 now and want to write a novel about a character who travels. Have you had the highs of utter joy? Have you had the lows of dark depression? Are you able to paints the bouquet of human emotion vividly, to pull your reader in? You can fake anything else in your writing EXCEPT emotions. It's why we read books, to feel. You will notice this. You have read a book that has been masterfully plotted but have left nothing in you, didn't touch you, right? And you have read a book that had flaws, that wasn't perfect and even got you pissed off at it, but it left a lasting impression, an emotion was stirred inside you, and you remember it, right? That's it. That's what writing is about, about us connecting on the emotional level with each other, across time, space, and other boundaries we have erected and are now suffering because of it. Literacy, books, that is our bridge to each other. So how can you write about what it feels like losing a loved one, if you have never experienced someone dying in your family? You can't. I mean, you can fake it, of course, because you remember how sad you were when your pet had died, but it's not the same. This is where age is completely irrelevant. You could have lived more life at 16 than others have at 60. So, please, WRITE, no matter what your age is, just don't give up and write, and experience life to its fullest, to make your writing richer. 

To write well, you have to live a lot

Someone said somewhere (or maybe I read it somewhere) that unless you're in your 30's, you probably don't have a novel in you yet. Don't quote me on this, please, and don't throw me these angry glances. I was not the one who said it, but it does make sense to me, because to be able to write well, you have to have lived life, a lot of life, to gather enough material for a genuine story. There are, of course, always exceptions to the rule, but this makes sense to me. I always get people asking me, where do you get inspiration, how do you do research, how do you keep yourself going, do you ever have writer's block? And the answer to all those questions is, nope, I don't ever do any of the above things and I don't have a writer's block, I have the opposite problem, I barely have time to write down my stories. Why? Because I lived so much life, that now it's bursting to get out of me in the shape of stories. Well then, is it true? Do you have to live a lot of life in order to write well? I think you do. Let me illustrate.

Without pain there is no depth. There are plenty of books out there that are brilliantly written, superbly plotted and amazingly structured. But many of them are very shallow, I have read a few myself. Don't take me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these books, but they lack depth, they don't grab you, they leave you unsatisfied, and they don't stay in your memory for long. You forget about them and move on. Why is that? It's because the author hasn't gone deep into her or his emotion enough to extract powerful life stuff and spill it on pages. It's a hard thing to do, and, frankly, unless you've been through a lot of shit in your life, you're too spoiled to reach into those depths, it's too painful, and if you're not used to the pain, not used to going through the pain, you're very unlikely to do it. Many things happen in life to people, but usually, the older you are, the more life experience you have had, the more you can draw upon. Perhaps this is where the 30's mark comes from in terms of a median age for one to be able to write a novel. You've got to admit, it does make sense. If there is nowhere to dive, how deep can your novel get? Not too much, sadly.  

Writing requires discipline. And most young people, let's face it, are flakes. I know, because I was a flake too. I thought I could do it all, I took on too much, and then ultimately I failed. Over, and over, and over again, until it hit me on how to do it properly. For that, I had to make many mistakes, to arrive at a point in my life where I could consciously commit to writing a book and then actually following through on it. It's a huge project, it takes a lot of will power to be able to lock yourself up, to say no to parties, to dinners, to friends who want to take you out. It takes focus and determination, and without it writing suffers, its quality suffers, so again, unless you've been through a lot in life and understand where your priorities are, it will be very hard for you to focus on your writing. There will be angst, and agony, and anxiety, and fear, and uncertainty, and plenty of other amazingly disturbing emotions that are very good at taking your focus away. And unless you're focused, you're very unlikely to produce quality work, it's as simple as that. 

There is no richness without layers. One of the most powerful characteristics of great novels is the multitude of layers. There is something for everyone, that's how a book appeals to a very large audience. A novel has to be layered in order to achieve this, and unless the author has had a very rich life, there won't be anything to draw upon, to be able to build needed complexity, of characters, of the plot, of style, of dialogue, you name it. Every aspect of the novel suffers when there are not enough facets to its creator. Again, it might read very well in the end, but it will never grow big, never amount to a cult status of a favorite book for many many readers, because there won't be enough of it. It's like an ability to see one thing from different angles and then being able to describe it in such a manner that makes it visible to the reader as well. And unless one has experienced it firsthand, how can one write about it? Fake it, of course. And if it's fake, we, as readers, will immediately feel it and set the book aside. You can fake anything you want, except emotions, and it's through emotions that we connect to a great book, and it's why we suggest it to friends, and rave about it, and want to read it over and over again. Without this emotional richness your book will feel empty.

 Maturity and freedom are the basis for great art. The biggest struggle for any artist is always the belief in oneself. It's a terrible thing to attempt when you're young. Everything is uncertain, the world is uncertain, life is uncertain, you spend your time searching for this certainty, struggling to find the meaning to life, throwing yourself from misery to happiness to misery again, for years, until one day you understand that there is no meaning to life, there is no certainty, life is pure chaos and there is nothing you can do about it. Except you can. You can stop searching for answers and start creating, to share your epiphany. This is how great art is born, out of this willingness to accept life as it is, and it often comes with age, because it starts with maturity and ends with freedom. There is certain freedom in being able to look in the face of a catastrophe and be okay with it advancing on you, it's what we like to call bravery, but very often it's simply this utter calm that stems from the understanding of life itself. Until you're there, it's hard to produce great art, your own doubts will get in the way and wreck your inspiration.

There are many more points I can come up with here, now that I'm writing on this topic, so it must ring true for me, then, this whole writing-well-after-having-lived-life thing. I certainly lived a lot of life. I can't tell if my writing is any good. I hope so. I know my readers will tell me. But I know one thing. I couldn't write until I came to this point in my life of being happy with myself, with who I am, with how my life turned out, to accepting it for what it is. After that, it was like a faucet got open, stories started pouring out of me with alarming speed. Still are. I sure hope they never stop.