On Beginning creative works, publicizing doubts, and Amazon reviews
The scariest part of any creative project is always right at the beginning. We stare down the blank page. We stare at the audience for a few seconds. We face the clean canvas. We begin the screenplay not knowing where to begin. We ruminate over the book before typing any words. There’s still more rumination to do. As Steven Pressfield says, Resistance is high when we’re about to begin our creative project. It mocks us and doesn’t think we can do it. It tells us so. Resistance teases us like a bully.
And yet we begin our work despite the negative calling. The only one there to cheer us on is ourselves. We’ve achieved an audience of 1 for the creative process. If we’re starting out and it is still early, we’re publishing to an audience of 8. It’s only upwards from there. With an audience in single digits, you can be more carefree in what you write. And if one of the eight makes fun of you, good for them. You’ve earned your first hater. You’re onto something. Somebody took the time to say something about your creative work.
Haters and critics are a strange lot. Typically they become those things, those qualities, because they have no creativity left to express themselves. Ironically, what they don’t know is the creative putting the work out there already has judged his or her performance again and again and again — harshly — enough so that there’s nothing new the critic can really say the creative hasn’t already said. Further critiques are redundant. The neurotic creative has already thought about it. He may even have condemned his own work in the same fashion as the hater. Don’t you think I didn’t think about that already!? he snarls. Imagine Larry David publicizing what others are thinking about his HBO show.
Agreement renders the critic redundant.
Being our own critic builds a robustness against actual critics and haters. If you’re already critiquing your own creative work, are you giving the critic further ammo, or are you beating him to his “job?” What good is a critic if he merely agrees with other critics? Agreement is never the job of a critic, nor that of Pressfield’s Resistance vs. creativity. Agreement renders the critic redundant.
Do they realize they’re doing this, turning a book review into a self-review?
Pick any bestselling book on Amazon and read a dozen reviews. You’ll likely find a bunch of five-star reviews, a couple of one-star reviews, and 60–70% of reviews in the middle. Five-star reviews are written by people who are already fans of the author, read a lot, and are happy the author is simply continuing along the creative journey. The one-star reviews are usually silly harsh condemnations that when read to the sub-text of what the reviewer says, turn out to be about the reviewer than about the work the guy is critiquing. Do they realize they’re doing this, turning a book review into a self-review? They tend to start their sentences with “I think…” or “I found the author…” or the classic “I don’t usually leave one-star reviews, but…” Suddenly, their one-star review reveals much more about the critic than about the creative work itself. How can you take this seriously? They couldn’t transform a cogent series of thoughts into a single written paragraph on one topic. It is no wonder they turned to criticism. It is all they had left.
What good comes from authors reading Amazon reviews of their work? I postulate not much. It is similar to a political discussion with a series of acquaintances. Some will agree with your political opinions and give your statements 5-star reviews. The others will vehemently disagree with you and give your political statements one-star reviews. The one-star people will never be converted to five-star agreeable types no matter how hard you try. So, like Amazon reviews, you’re left with a handful of people who love you and several who hate what you represent and put out there. The question is: would the same outcome have happened had you done nothing and never had the political discussion in the first place? What if you never read the Amazon reviews?
