I’ve developed a pretty thick skin over the years. My joke is if you can’t come at me like my ex-wife does, you’re strictly an amateur. Customer service experience is helpful, but writing can feel like a particularly vulnerable way to be naked before the world; a large part due to the insecurity we feel about the entire process. We are desperate for our writing to be accepted, understood, and even loved but most often that’s not how it works. No one owes us anything, especially not their undivided attention or even their comprehension, which can be really hard to take about something you’ve toiled over.
Some years ago, I belonged to a screenwriting community where you had to review other people’s work in order to get reviews of your own. I ended my reviews with the tag “as always, this is just my .02 cents of opinion.” Usually that was enough to remind people to take my review for what is was, just my damn take, but every once in a while I’d get a long, defensive response outlining in great detail all the ways I missed the intended point. Reviewers on that site weren’t gatekeepers in any particular way for, well, anything, but because the site was run by a production company, people were convinced that somehow your review was torpedoing their chances of getting the company’s consideration for their “masterpiece.” (A highly laughable proposition for so many reasons.)
Speaking of actual gatekeepers, albeit in a very, very, small way, I once had an ex-girlfriend who edited a free literary journal for haiku aficionados. Sometimes a rejected poet — always a guy — would aggressively demand she explain why she turned down their submission. She hated confrontation, so this part of the gig really stressed her out. I offered to respond for her (“Dude, it’s just a fucking haiku, get over it!”) but she concluded, probably correctly, that that would be doing more harm than good to the cause. LOL.
As that kerfuffle you referenced between that YA author and the college students demonstrates, getting defensive never, ever, ends well for the writer. That doesn’t stop even writers who should be used to being very much in the public eye from giving in to the temptation, such as Bret Stephens of the NY Times has done a couple times over the years. We just want to be understood. I will read all comments and critiques of my writing, but if I don’t agree with the take, I will simply give me thanks and move on. If I find something of use, I will try to incorporate it. If I do find myself tempted to get defensive, I stand up and step away from the keyboard and do something else until the feeling passes. It’s the way I keep my sanity as a writer.
