First off, I gotta get hip with this whole linking thing. I am just so sure that one of these days someone somewhere is going to go all ballistic on me for improperly linking to something of theirs. It's going to happen.
Now, as I have decided to momentarily crawl out of my navel grazing yurt of pity and angst-dome, I came across this interesting little piece at Cuddlebuggery which is a YA book blog I frequent from time to time (not as much now though).
Anyways, this blogger at Book Hollow ran into some issues when they reviewed a self published book of some author "no-one-really-knows about". The author pretty much threw a hissy fit because she felt the reviewer was being "mean spirited" and having a "bad day" when she reviewed her book. Never mind that the reviewer actually wrote a very honest and tactful review, with the only vitriol coming in the form of sarcasm, the author felt that she was a "victim" of bullying and has since flooded Goodreads with her many blog posts detailing her treatment.
Righty-o. So in my time of writing this I decided to do a little digging into this bullying of authors self published (or otherwise) thing. So, I discovered that the site stopthegrbullies.com is devoted to providing support to these ailing darlings of apparent abuse from reviewers and all around trolling assholes.
Now let me first address the whole hissy-fit author issue first: Based on the review from Book Hollow and the author's subsequent response, I'd have to say that this woman has a major case of NTGAPS-- Needs To Grow A Pair Syndrome. Seriously.
You criticize the reviewer of having a bad day and being hurtful toward your book when they were just being honest about what their reading experience was? Plus, given the actual review, there wasn't anything there in the least bit entailing that the reviewer was trying to put her down. She didn't attack her personal integrity, told her to never write another book again, or called her a stupid poo poo-poo-face. Sarcastic or not, she addressed her issue with the novel in as straight forward a way as possible.
Did I mention the reviewer WAS honest?
So the author's response is to be super offended and then talk in her blog post of being an utter victim and whatnot. Again, I say to her, please grow up a little. A LOT. Please. People are going to be assholes when they review your book. Sometimes they're going to be honest (which is what you got from Book Hollow) and sometimes they are just going to respond with a flat "didn't like it" and you'll never get much more out of them. Heck, sometimes you'll even get an "I liked it!" in more or less a short, blithe way and, let me tell you, that's not always good either (though this chick seems like she needs the validation). So people suck. Reviewers can suck. Getting a negative review can suck but that is the way of the writing world. You enter this realm (or at least you should) with the expectancy of someone not quite liking the novel you've sweated, cried, and bled over. Again, it sucks. Of course I want someone to like my stories as much as I do, but you gotta realize that that is an unrealistic expectation, and whining over someone merely giving their opinion has to be the most unproductive, immature thing to taint your writing career with.
On to stopthebullies. So the site is made for support and details posts which point out instances of abuse from reviewers, yadda, yadda. While some of the issues I came across could very possibly (and I say that with extremely flat empathy toward the whole thing) contain legitimate issues of bullying and harmful cyberstalking for the sake of being a bastard, there's one post that really raised my skepticism level up to a hundred and ninety. Basically, the "bully review" is considered such because the user accidentally gave a one star review on the author's page just for the sake of asking a question about the book. While she was quickly corrected by other users, since her one star review didn't demonstrate an actual grievance with the book, STGRB pretty much used her as an example of what it means to leave a "bully review" despite the fact that what she did was obviously a mistake and in no way meant to offend anyone.
So this really irked me. You're using someone as an example (not a very good one at that) in order to show what you consider to be bullying. I just don't see how this articulately conveys what STGRB is trying to do. It was a mistake, an accident, and while they point out they aren't calling the user a "bully" her one star debacle somehow qualifies as "bully reviewing". Last I checked bullying was the act of someone purposely targeting an individual, group, what have you, with the intents of inflicting ridicule, harm, and any other form of assault. So for this site constantly whining about how so many of the members are victims to in turn use someone as a example to fuel their agenda--not cool, dudes. NOT cool.
As I said, there could very well be real cases of bullying that finds its way into some of their posts. A lot of accusation of taking comments out of context spew from both sides and it would take some real tenacity to follow each and every case to make a definite stance on who's actually to blame. I'm skeptical of STGRB as a whole, but I'm not saying no one on there isn't being bullied. It happens, and as whiny and nutless as I find some of the entries (for instance there's a whole username list of "toxic" offenders which comes off kind of--childish---to me; kind of like a kid in elementary school writing out a crayon scribbled list of classmates they consider dum dum heads) and the general tone of the whole site, I still can't wholly say someone isn't being abused. IT HAPPENS.
But that's just it, right? It happens. As a writer especially, it's going to happen a lot. You're going to feel bruised and battered and just outright pissed on by the world at large because someone didn't react positively to your work. Sometimes people are going to criticize you for whatever reason. J. K. Rowling (who I kind of personally admire) has got the shit end of people's asses for years since HP's arrival. Many are famously known for not even reading her books and calling her out as the harbinger of Satan and all that is unholy and not good. People believed she was on a personal mission to turn children into demons and coerce them into drinking blood with her and summoning the dead. Did it hold water? Uh, hell no, but there you go. Any rationally minded person can see that this it was just idiotic assholery on the bestower's part, but it happened. And she dealt with it. Many greats before her have dealt with it.
So you deal with it. People shit on you and you try to be objective about it and you deal with it and keep writing. Yeah, sometimes you'll be hit a little too personally, and in some instances maybe you have to defend yourself, but it's just plain dumb to assume that you're immune to it.
Personally, has it happened to me yet? No. But it will. I even kind of want it to.
Am I glutton for cruelty? No, but many times back in college I felt that no one had really given my work the hard edged eye that it desperately needs. Not that I want someone telling me that because my works sucks than that must mean I am a considerably sucky waste of human existence as well, but I know it's out there and there's a reckless (but realistic) part of me that wants to face it, to get some mud thrown in my face. I want someone to shred my work to pieces so I can (once I stop crying and nursing my wounds with chocolate) sit down and figure out how to put it together again. Constructive criticism is always great, and generally preferred, but I've got to get hit with a few flame bullets before I can learn how to properly dodge them the next time.
I want that experience any day versus walking around in some narmy, overly sensitive head cloud that tells me I'm a good writer and I deserve only praise when the one thing that may save me is to have that cloud waved away and reality give me a little lesson in what it really means to be an artist.
It starts with learning how to wear them big girl britches.
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