This Means Something...
Dear Readers,
It happened by chance. Someone’s review of a classic work of “capital L” Literature crossed my Twitter feed. As reviews often are on the internet, it was scathing. The author of the review, a person I do not recognize, absolutely loathed Moby Dick. He hated Moby Dick so much, his review lobbed a few personal attacks at the extremely deceased Herman Melville.
When we scroll Goodreads, we probably expect this behavior and think nothing of it. Everybody is ranking, reviewing, and applying star ratings to everything, and it’s just part of the landscape. When it trips and spills into our social feeds, sandwiched between corporate product announcements, insurance advertisements, and everyday Twitter chatter, it’s often disjointed and out-of-step.
Reading this random person’s visceral, streamlined take-down of a Literary Canon author who died in 1891 sparked a couple of thoughts. First, if we’re lucky, we’ll create something with a legacy powerful and enduring enough that people over a century later will still spend their valuable time railing against in tabloids and on social feeds. Secondly, every famous artist has critics.
When I’ve thought about seeing my robot scifi novel in print (finally), there’s a part of me that goes cold. Releasing this novel to the world means I’m opening myself up, that I’m taking something from deep within me and putting it on display. People will criticize it. Some will reduce it to hot-takes and half-thought opinions. In a worst-case scenario, it’ll be met with universal derision.
That’s a fear we all have, right?
Today, I’m asking… why? Like WHO cares?
I saw some stranger rip Moby Dick apart on my social media feed, and my first thought was, “Why is this guy devoting so much time whining about it?” It’s not a stretch to guess that this reaction isn’t unique. Thousands of people who saw the same thing I did most likely reacted in the same way. Better yet, they probably didn’t even bother to stop, scrolling past it to keep up with the trends of the hour.
And yet — I paralyze myself worrying about what random strangers might think of my work. While writing this, I took a quick look at Goodreads reviews of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. I went straight to the one-star reviews. It’s no surprise, but in this sphere, people are pretty mean here, too. It didn’t take me long to find plenty of negative reviews that reduced another work of the “Literary Canon” to one solitary sentence.
My point is… this stuff is ever present when you look for it. All of us will have critics. There will always be that one stranger having a bad day who will work through their feelings by “reviewing” something. And it might be something of ours.
And that’s okay.
Because we built it. Because we spent our energy creating something. We used our minds and our talents to birth something from nothing, and that’s all we or anyone else can ask of us. It’s our gift. It’s what we’re compelled to offer the world, and people will do what they’ve always done, take it or leave it.
Once we create, not even the harshest critic can rob us of that.
I had another chance encounter.
A coworker introduced me to a platform called dreamlike.art. It’s an AI-generated art platform. It takes your thoughts, words, and descriptions and transforms them into a series of unique, original art pieces for free.
This colleague used it for his own writing projects. Hearing this awoke something in me. It reminded me that as I shop around my scifi novel, I don’t have to wait in the deafening silence of non-response forever. When we get validation from others, it’s the cherry on top of the act of creation, but it’s not the be-all, end-all. I never anticipate making a fortune writing. I just do it because I can. Because I want to release it unto the world.
Dreamlike.art reminded me of this. Instead of waiting for an editor to scoop my work up, I could just self-publish it and move on. The colleague who introduced me to the platform, as I mentioned before, uses it. His wife plays around with it as well, as she self-publishes at least one novel a year (and has been for over a decade). Maybe they have the right idea. Maybe I've been too focused on the "red carpet treatment" of having a publisher and not just the act of creation.
It's hard to describe that sensation that we get sometimes, but you know the one I'm talking about. It's the sensation that stops you in your tracks, that tells you that something you're viewing or hearing or engaging with is important.
I had that feeling with both of these encounters.
I hope your creative juices are flowing. It's difficult sometimes, but don't stress on the days when it doesn't flow as easily. You're going to deliver something amazing unto the world.
We're all in this together,
Scott
I had the pleasure of interviewing the creative team behind Red Hood: Outlaws.
I also interviewed Athena Finger, granddaughter of the creator of Batman, as well as playwright Lenny Schwartz and True Aquaman Rick Stafford.
Because we all have dayjobs, I wrote an SEO blog on the “Top 10 Ways to Create Authentic Content.”