If you’ve ever innocently released a work of art online but sat back completely bewildered by the negativity being flung at it like poo from a monkey’s hand, I’m going to let you in on a secret: It’s because you made something. Anything.
When it comes down to creating and delivering art for the world to see, deserved admiration is often pummeled by ignorant scrutiny. It is dangerous because you will blame yourself, if you aren’t used to it. You will feel like a failure.
It’s personal.
A couple of years ago, I let a filmmaker friend’s critique of my work wreck me for months. I combined his comments with online comments, and I became too terrified to release anything at all. Every idea I had was dead on arrival because I became my own worst hater.
But you know what I learned, once I came to my senses enough to investigate? The online comments were made by people with empty YouTube accounts, and my filmmaker friend had some head knowledge from online articles but very little experience and an empty portfolio.
Creating is hard. Critiquing is easy.
Beyond a once-over or worse, a glance, critiquing requires nothing. It is something that some people instinctively do as they consume art, while others just enjoy the art. Granted, it does take at least some effort to type or speak a destructive sentence to someone. The question is: Why should you care what someone who is actively attempting to destroy your soul thinks of what it creates?
Creating requires hours, days, weeks, months, or even years of your time. It requires practice. It requires commitment. So, giving it up because someone delivered a long-winded “you suck” to your inbox is true lunacy.
It’s not me… it’s you.
Lots of people like my writing and my films, and I’m sure many more would if they knew about it. The haters are the minority. And I’m willing to bet that if you ran the numbers, you’d discover the same ratio.
Naysayers are never doers. They are jealous. They despise you because you encompass what they wish they had the work ethic to become.
So, friends just do it: Create. Make. Put it out there for the world to see it. Move on to your next creation. Deflect those haters with more work, and I promise they will tire before you even get warmed up.