What if everyone hates my writing?

I understand your feelings, everyone who plans to reveal themselves to the general public in some way, has those anxieties.
I resolved mine by writing a blog of fictional stories. Good response there gave me the confidence i needed. However, the feeling never fully goes away. So what I am doing now is simply writing to the best of my ability, and if in the end, after I give it everything I got, and after all the feedback and correction, I am still not happy to put my name to it publicly, I wont try to publish. Simple as that.

 

What an extremely kind and very true contribution to the forum, Mckk! What you said, about sums it up, at least for me.

I would also like to add that even bestselling, internationally-popular authors don't appeal to everyone. There will always be people out there who won't like what you write, for whatever reason. As Mckk said, you need to find the people who do, and pay particular attention to their feedback. They are your 'target audience' and the ones who may, ultimately, buy what you write!

Very good luck with your writing, and your self-confidence.

 

Write until the words spill from your eyes. Do not type in your sleep. So many times I wake up exhausted and I have written nothing. But do leave the job. Nothing is more important than completion of the project. You are magnificent AUTHOR, remember. Those pygmies. You are better than all of them.

 

to add to my simplistic response, it won't/shouldn't matter if you're only writing for yourself... if you want to be published/produced, that's another thing altogether...

 

So many good comments on this site and I agree with most, if not all, of them. Agatha Christie, one of the best selling authors of all time, is absoultely detested by some readers. Some people don't like Stephen King's books, or at least some of them. You can't please all the people all the time. Obviously if you want to sell some of your work, you need to appeal to some readers. If you are just writing for your own pleasure, then as mg357 says who gives a damn.

Writing on a regular basis will help you to improve. But editing of your work is just as, if not more, important than writing. Careless mistakes, ideas gushing from your brain into your fingers and just plain poor spelling make so many pieces of work, something editors will turn down.

Keep at it and post your work here.

Best of luck!

 

Write with confidence, and don't look back--until the first draft is done. Then worry about why people may or may not hate your work.

 

i suggest you make for your nearest bookshop (believe me there are still some around) and walk in, right into the middle of the store. And look around, have a really good look at all the books. Ignore the duplicates copies and look at the vast amount of books from thousands if not hundred of thousands of authors. There'll be something for everyone there, in hundreds of different styles and hundreds of different voices. Do you think any of them worried that others wouldn't like their writing, probably. Did it stop them, obviously not. You need to believe in your abilities. Everyone has doubts about their writing abilities/talent, most published authors in fact. The thing to remember, never allow self-doubt to stop you. Be focussed, determined and downright obsession until you succeed.

 

You shouldn't think much about it. Write for your own pleasure. Don't think about how others will react, especially considering the fact that the story isn't finished and ready to be published yet.
If some people hate or dislike your story, so what? If you manage to publish it, you should be proud of yourself. You should focus on the ones who like the story, not the ones who dislike it. There are seven billion people on Earth. Why shouldn't anyone like or even love your story?
Just because your story isn't someone's cup of tea, you shouldn't give up. Are you aiming for popularity and fame? Writing isn't the best place to get that, you know. Let's say (hypothetically) that 90% of the Earth's population disliked your work and only 10% appreciated it. You should still be proud that you managed to publish a book and that you managed to get 10% of the population to like it!


Seriously, forget about what others think while you write! Write whatever you are happy with!

 

I disagree with this. If only 10% of the people who read your book like it, then you probably need to work on your writing skills.

That being said, what doesn't matter is people hating it but the AMOUNT of people hating it. If, say, 100 people on Amazon review your book and 60 of them give it a 3 stars or less review, that's something to pay attention to and try to improve in the future. But if 100 people review your book and only 20-30 of them give a 3 stars or less review, who cares about those 20-30 people? Another thing to remember is coatrack reviews - that is, people who use their review of your book to talk about something else. If you write a book that includes environmental awareness, for example, there's going to be a few people who hate Al Gore/An Inconvenient Truth who'll give you a negative review based on that, no matter how important a plot point it is.

 

Well, as a fan of a lot of "underground" art (especially music but also books, movies etc), I suppose I have to disagree with this. Some pieces of art just aren't that consumer-friendly, and those are the ones most people will rate low. That doesn't mean the piece of art is bad or needs work, it just means it doesn't appeal to the masses. If you played anything by Discordance Axis on MTV and asked the viewers to rate it, it'd likely get a bad score, yet in grindcore circles, the band is held in high regard. That's because those listeners understand the art in question and hence can appreciate it and see it for what it was intended to be, whereas you average Coldplay fan just won't get it. Now this doesn't mean the Coldplay fan is stupid or has bad taste, just that his or her taste is different and, at the same time, far more common than that of a DA fan. Guess what kind of a rating would Coldplay get on a grindcore forum?

This doesn't mean all pieces of art that receive low scores are hidden gems. Definitely not, but some are, and by God, I hope the artists never change said works. Now that I think about it, the same applies to food: millions of people love Macdonald's but dislike sushi. Does this mean sushi should be deepfried because most people haven't acquired the taste for it?

 

It's better to write to a specific target audience than to target everyone. 10% of the population is 700 million people. At $1 per book (your paperback cut if you go the traditional publishing route), that's $700,000,000. Of course, given international rights and global poverty, maybe only 1% of them buy it. Then that's only $7,000,000. Sad days.

If a book is correctly marketed, then it is marketed to your target audience. They will be the ones most likely to hear about it, read it, and review it positively on Amazon. Even if 90%+ of the population would hate it, they probably would never hear about it, nor read it, and thus never rate negatively it on Amazon. However, if you try to write a book for everyone to enjoy, your book probably isn't particularly unique or interesting. The target audience would probably read it, dislike it, and rate it poorly on Amazon.

My advice, take risks and target a specific audience, and you'll do very well.

 

I understand your point.

But still........ Although I would prefer that my book got good reviews from 90% or more of the people who read it, just having published a book would be an achievement for me. Having people read my stories is something I am aiming for.
And a book getting a bad review doesn't have to be because of bad writing skills. Maybe the book was aimed at the wrong audience? Maybe the book is a cult-concept? Maybe it is not everyone's cup of tea?
It can be a well-written book with a well-developed story and still get bad reviews. Popularity doesn't necessarily equal quality.

I agree with you, but I still think that popularity doesn't equal quality. Not all books are correctly marketed and not all books are consumer friendly.

I agree. There are many hidden gems out there.

 

I agree that quality doesn't equal popularity. You can have a quality manuscript, but not get picked up by an agent or publisher, for instance. Even if you do get published, you are right that it could be poorly marketed and get lost in the sea of new books. If it's really high quality, however, and you get really lucky, you will get a cult following. They'll market your books for you by recommending it to their friends. It might not make up for bad marketing done by your publisher, but it can make a real difference.

 

LOL, really? I always thought it was the other way around - popularity doesn't equal crapiness. In the anime/manga world, for example (I'm not a huge anime/manga fan but I do enjoy it from time to time) whenever a manga/anime becomes popular, there willl always be a vocal group of people who say it sucks, regardless of whether said popular anime/manga gets good or bad reviews. A perfect example is The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya. That particular anime became extremely popular around the world, and naturally, a few people came out of the woodworks to say it sucked. But the thing is, it didn't suck - nearly all the professional (not random blogs) reviews of it were positive, including the most famous, Anime News Network. (I'm a bit biased, 'cause I like it a lot as well, but you get my point.) So, I think in that case, people were just jumping to conclusions and saying "It's popular, so it sucks."

I'm not saying that when people say that something popular sucks they're wrong - of course not. But they're not always right, either.

 

The Big Bang Theory sucks.

 

I've never watched that show, so I can't comment on that. I rarely watch TV at all nowadays.

 

I never said that popular things suck in general.

But things aren't always popular because of quality. The reason why Britney Spears has been popular since 1998 isn't her vocal skills! It can work the same way with books and authors, although this phenomenon seems to be more prominent in the music industry. Sometimes, good marketing and good agents can do the trick!
I believe that whether a person gets famous or not can be very much a question of coincidence.

 

Yup, and that includes timing, presenting your work to the world at the right time. Plenty of... well, not-so-high-class fantasy books came stumbling in the wake of the LOTR movies, and the same goes for books about magic and pig Latin following Harry Potter, and vampire stories glittering just behind Twilight.

Just because something's big and gets good reviews doesn't mean it sucks or that it's good. Then again, just because something gets bad reviews or is unknown doesn't mean it sucks or is sterling either.

 

Sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to say here. For the longest time, good or bad reviews have been an indicator of quality for movies, books, music, or what have you - so much, in fact, the Pulitzer committee has an award for "Distinguished Criticism". If good or bad reviews aren't an indicator of quality, as you seem to believe, then what is? How do we know that The Great Gatsby or Lolita, for example, are quality pieces of literature if good/bad reviews mean nothing?

About Britney Spears, I like her first song, "Baby One More Time", it's one of my favourite pop songs. All the rest of her songs are pretty bland IMO.

 

Well, what is considered good or bad is very much about personal taste. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make a conclusion if a work of arts is good or bad. Just because a book doesn't win an award, doesn't mean that it is worse than the book which had just won an award. The jury who nominate books for an award haven't heard about all books in the world.

Fame is not so much a matter of skill. Yes, famous people can be skilled, but there are millions of skilled people in the world who never become famous.

 

There are certain standards for "quality pieces", I believe, but even if The Great Gatsby is acclaimed, how come half of my uni class including the professor disliked the book and considered it overrated? And how come so many people love and have been touched by Twilight? Besides, people are so different. Yeah, my professor might love Moby Dick, but I've gotten nowhere with that novel. Imagine me borrowing that book to my 14yo cousin back when she still slept in Edward Cullen sheets! She would've used it to maim her nosy little brother. Reviews can be and often are indicators of quality, but even if a novel is considered of good or high quality, it doesn't mean you're gonna like it or consider it good. You might think it sucks. And the Twilight fans might get outraged when some dusty old critic bashes their favorite saga that they consider the best.

 

To Kendria Perry: well, what Drusilla and KaTrian said.

After all, rating art is an odd notion to begin with since so much of liking or disliking a piece of art is up to personal preferences and taste. What was it they say about arguing over matters of taste? The heavy hitters of the 1960s/1970s like Richie Blackmore, Jimmy Page etc. thought the Beatles sucked because they weren't very good technically (although Blackmore did admit the Beatles had "pretty little songs" or some such grudging acknowledgment of accomplishment), yet you'd be hard-pressed to find a person who doesn't like even one song from them or doesn't at least admit they were important players in the development of popular music into what it is today despite their technical shortcomings. On the other hand, John Mclaughlin from the Mahavishnu Orchestra is one of the most proficient guitar players in existence, yet most people don't really like his music. His skills as a musician and composer are undeniable, but should he be rated higher or lower in the artistic food chain than the Beatles?

Edit: to reiterate, you can get some idea of a work of art's "goodness" by reviews, but in the end only you can say whether you like it or not.

 

And plenty of famous people who have no laudable, worthwhile skills other than knowing how to draw attention to themselves.

 

Think about your demographic. And make sure THEY don't think it sucks. If your one of those writers who constantly needs confidence check then you'll find this craft is a hellhole.