It's a Free World

***IT’S A FREE WORLD***

Your writing career can be an amazing time in your life full of magic, adventure, and wonder, not unlike the worlds you create through your craft. But at the same time, it isn’t all rainbows and Skittles. More like Martian death rays and dick. Sooner or later, you as a writer will have to come to terms with the fact that criticism is inevitable, whether it’s constructive feedback from your beta readers or malicious trolling from a faceless bastard. Does it hurt no matter how well-intentioned it is? Always. It’s like saying the sun’s going to come up tomorrow. Everybody knows that. We all feel at least some sensitivity when it comes to what we produce. To be fair, your career won’t rise or fall based on one bad review or even a hundred. How you react to those reviews? That’s a little closer to a career killer if you’re too aggressive.

While I still get anxious feelings in my gut at the thought of being judged, I’m not anywhere close to being as bad at taking criticism as I was all throughout the 2000’s. I was a fucking monster when it came to responding to my critics. That’s part of the reason why I consider the 2000’s to be the hardest decade of my life: because I wouldn’t let anybody teach me how to better myself. I incorrectly assumed my critics were out to play with my brain like silly putty and mold me into something I’m not. Being a soul-dead conformist is bad. Being a better artist and a better person is something we should all strive for. So I guess I would be conforming to commonsense and decency, by that definition.

My first “traumatic episode” with criticism came in 2001, where I attended an anime/sci-fi/fantasy convention called INCON. One of the attractions at this event was having your manuscript critiqued by five different professional authors. What did I submit to this critique session? A Starcraft rip-off known as The Earth Campaign, which sounds more like an eco-terrorist group than a legitimate space opera. The first pro-author’s main complaint was that there weren’t enough visuals in my writing, a.k.a. not enough showing and too much telling. The second pro-author’s complaint was that my characters were making stupid decisions.

Basically, my manuscript TOLD the audience that a space rebel scissor kicked a glass pod and almost broke his ankle rather than opening it a reasonable way, thus he was “thinking with his gonads”. Mild sexism aside, I walked away after the first two authors said their peace and was a teary mess for the rest of the night. I sang Pink Floyd songs on the fire exit for good measure. I had it in my head that the only reason I had fight scenes at all in my book was because of my male organs and not because I genuinely like that stuff. Well-intentioned criticism, but I took it the wrong way and that set the tone for the rest of the 2000’s.

Fast forward to 2004 where I took a creative writing class at Olympic College. Admittedly, this was not a safe, nurturing environment for any author because the students had no limits on the harshness of their criticisms. If they wanted to insult me, they could. If they wanted to destroy my self-esteem, they could go nuts. That’s exactly what happened when I wrote a medieval fantasy story where a witch hunter tried to recruit an acrobatic thief into his guild, to no success whatsoever. The chapter ended with a guerrilla army hiding under a pile of leaves springing to life in an attempt to test the acrobat’s kung fu skills. Yes, those were real errors in my story. Everyone in the class had all criticisms for me and no praise, a stark contrast to other authors who got at least some praise.

The worst of my criticisms came from a guy who simply said my story “sucked”. No context. No reasons. Just that it “sucked”. To be fair to him, it did, anachronisms and telling instead of showing aside. While I regret not taking my criticism in an appropriate way, I wouldn’t have developed my newfound skills as a poet if this didn’t happen. I wrote an insult poem about the guy who said my story sucked, where I detailed all the ways in which I would fuck his female relatives while comparing him to a Lord of the Rings hobbit. The poem was rubbish, but it was good start. Sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something.

Whether I was getting bad grades in college or negative comments on Deviant Art, my descent into madness spiraled out of control for the rest of the 2000’s. I screamed at my Deviant Art critics and wrote more angry poetry about them, detailing how I would once again fuck their female relatives while comparing them to people with Down’s Syndrome and sewer mutants. I silently seethed when one of my creative writing teachers gave me a C in her class despite me following her orders not to write R-rated offensiveness. So much anger and rage built up inside of me that taking any sort of mild criticism would result in the tongue-lashing from hell.

And then the 2000’s climaxed with the worst of the worst, both in terms of my own crass behavior and also in terms of the criticism I’ve received on Deviant Art. Two days after Christmas in 2009, I opened my inbox to find that several Deviants were angry about a comedic essay I wrote called “Class of ‘13”, named after Green Day lyrics. In this essay, I fantasized about being an autocratic schoolteacher who would whip my students if they talked like “text-messaging queens” in their creative writing projects. I derided an entire generation for growing up with technology, basically condemning myself as a 24-year-old Boomer.

I eventually deleted my essay and apologized, but not before I screamed at my critics to “get in a circle and butt fuck each other”. I also wrote an angry poem about one of these critics where I told him to “drink gasoline”. As one critic so rightfully put it, “Change or die!” From that day on, I decided no online battle was worth fighting because fighting never solved anything. Nobody changed their mind because I told them to “suck a dick” or “eat my shit”. When given the choice to change or die, I chose to change. The battering my mind took wasn’t worth it, but it was just what I needed.

While the 2000’s were the hardest decade of my life, the 2010’s were the easiest. Sure, I had my fair share of shitty moments, but the way I responded to criticism was much better. I knew my writing career was stagnating. Nothing of mine was getting published and why would it? My work was mediocre at best and a dumpster fire at worst. Accepting criticism and sometimes shelling out money for it was the only way out of spinning my wheels. The more people I let in, the happier I was and the stronger my writing became. I’ve made many friends along the way and I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world. I’ve gotten a few shitty reviews on my self-published books, but I’ve also gotten some good ones.

While improvement is a necessary part of one’s writing career, it won’t change the fact that nobody is above criticism despite how far they’ve come. That’s something you’re going to have to be okay with if you want a successful career. It’s 2020 and I’ve learned my lessons. In the end, we don’t just live in a “free country”. We live in a free world. Whether you live in America, Canada, England, or even Saudi Arabia, you have the right to say whatever you want about my writing and I won’t hound you for it.

Bad reviews won’t derail somebody’s career; a lack of humility will. I sincerely believe Norman Boutin could have had a successful career despite Empress Theresa being boring as hell, if only he didn’t lash out at everyone who criticized his work. Hell, if he had accepted criticism gracefully, he probably wouldn’t have a boring book to begin with. Same thing goes for Ann Fishman, Onision (sexual crimes be damned), and whoever wrote My Immortal (the Harry Potter fan fiction, not the Evanescence song).

Does criticism hurt? Absolutely. It always will. But do you have to react poorly to it? Never. Hell, you can flat out ignore the trolling if you want. You can even block some of the trolls if they get to be too much. But the louder you scream, the louder the world screams back at you. Isn’t that right, Donald the Magic Dumbass? I’m Garrison Kelly! Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight!

***INTERNET DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

(Circa 2018)

ASHLEY: Oh my god, Garrison! I need to convince you to get a Pay Pal account!

GARRISON: In the words of that Steven Crowder meme, “Change my mind.”

ASHLEY: Dude, mailing checks is so 1995.

GARRISON: Congratulations, you’ve won.

ASHLEY: Yay!

***POST-SCRIPT***

See what happens when you accept other people’s advice? You get a PayPal account AND a healthy writing career!