You Can’t Please Everyone with Your Writing

It’s OK, even necessary, to piss some readers off now and then

I don’t recall who first said this to me, but I long ago incorporated this wisdom into my writing life: If you don’t piss someone off now and then, you’re not writing anything worth reading.

It’s not that we should try to piss anyone off. Great writing can please a lot of people most of the time. And it’s good to do the hard thing, to reach across the audience aisle, convince skeptical readers to see the world in a new way. That’s a noble goal too often ignored by many writers who’d rather preach to their choir and alienate their detractors again and again.

But good writing will frustrate and anger some people at least now and then. I keep the comforting thought in my back pocket for times like this:

My recent piece on writer’s block, as crossposted to Medium, generated more positive reader reaction than any of my previous ~50 Writer’s Guide articles—more than 100 encouraging comments and wonderful follow-on suggestions and personal perspectives. But one reader ripped me a new one. 

The individual took me to task for lack of specificity, abrupt introduction of new ideas, poor flow and structure, and repetition and redundancy. In sum, this person commented, “I'm not sure how you thought you were equipped to market yourself as an expert on the subject of writing, but I think, based on skimming your output, you're entirely unqualified.”

Ouch!

If you happen to be human, and you’re a writer, it’s quite possible that criticism from readers feels like a sharp knife in the chest. That’s how it is for me. When a reader lays on heavy criticism, I often feel my blood pressure spike as the fight-or-flight stress response kicks in. It’s as though the reader is a saber-tooth tiger and I’m standing there in my loincloth, nearly naked and exposed, with nowhere to run. 

Image: Pixabay

It’s the feeling of being cornered. And when we humans get cornered—especially publicly cornered—the inclination is to fight, not flee.

Don’t do it.

Arguing with readers is an unproductive use of your fingers. Learn from the criticism, if there’s some learnings buried in the vitriol. Or don’t. But move on. Spend your time writing the next story, rather than ruminating over the criticism of your last one. 

If you must weigh in, see my piece about how to respond to nasty readers. Meantime, the point of this post is to acknowledge three important truths about the life of a writer and our relationship with readers: