My Mom Thinks I'm a Good Writer

Thoughts on discounting reviews

I know I’ve written something good when I get a voicemail from my mom like the one I woke up to recently.

There was a time, not long ago, that this voicemail would have triggered my imposter syndrome and made me question whether I’ve made the right career choices. Of course, my mom likes it, right? It’s sweet that she tells me, but the effect was that I’d end up feeling worse about my writing abilities because I thought she was trying to make me feel better.

I don’t have that reaction anymore. If anyone were to tell me that I’m an excellent basketball player, I would think they’re just trying to make me feel better. But I’m feeling good about my writing lately. So, how did I get here, and how can I convey this valuable information to other writers I know who need it?

Bad reviews are good

We pay more attention to negative reviews than to positive ones. This is a useful trait that alerts us there may be things we need to correct.

This review lowered my average rating, which makes me angry. It’s tempting to discount it as the ramblings of someone angry about something else. However, even poorly written negative reviews may contain valuable information.

I believe that only bad writers don’t pay attention to negative reviews.

But, what makes someone suspicious and mistrustful of good reviews?

Relearning to pay attention to reviews

Ideally, every bad review would allow us to do better in the future. However, it’s more often true that every bad review can cause a person to become more careful or even stop making things out of fear of bad reviews. Because of this, a natural reaction to bad reviews is to protect yourself by discounting the reviewer’s abilities or questioning their motives. However, once you do that, you have to discount good reviews as well — you can’t honestly say that bad reviews are all wrong and good reviews are all correct.

Instead of not paying attention to any reviews, I now believe it’s better to pay equal attention to the bad and good reviews (as well as to a lack of reviews, which is often just a different kind of bad review). This sounds obvious, but it’s not easy! I read and think about every negative review and consider how it can help me to improve my work. I also read my positive reviews and think about what I did well.

What I’ve learned

A surprising result of learning to pay attention to reviews is that it’s surprisingly rare that good and bad reviews mention the same thing. A positive review might say that my book is thorough and well-written. A negative review might mention that I skimmed over an important topic. Both reviews may be false, of course. But it’s generally more likely that both reviews are correct.