Feedback Loops

Last week, a man (I assume) e-mailed me and said I was bad at writing. He said, “Since you dispense advice, I hope you won’t mind receiving some.” I should have stopped reading there but I don’t have that kind of discipline.

The one place the column falls short is in the quality of the writing. I suspect you hear this often and I don't want to pile on but have you ever considered enrolling in a class at a community college, university, or even adult ed center? With all due respect, it is a relatively small and extremely worthwhile investment for someone in your profession.

I re-read the e-mail a few times to make sure I understood the message. I wondered if I was being trolled because not only was he suggesting I was a bad writer, he also believed many people agreed.

One of my biggest flaws is a pathological need to respond to internet criticism. I come by it honestly and am working on it in therapy, as one does. In the meantime, I hate when I do it. I hate when my skin thins to nothing, because it is an intolerable level of vulnerability. In the moment, though, clapping back is incredibly satisfying and, frankly, it’s so easy to do. Trolls are, generally, not the brightest. They have weak arguments, bad grammar and they cannot spell. It it does not demand much effort to dispense with them in causticly amusing ways. But it’s also immature. And petty. I know that. I’ve gotten much better about it since I met my wife Debbie who is not Very Online but I am not completely reformed. Yet.

As you might expect, I sent this amateur critic a snippy response about having a Ph.D. and have written several successful books. I literally teach writing. My students have written bestselling novels! Brilliant stories about womanhood! Incisive novels about the human cost of war (The Militia House by John Milas, 2023)!

He wrote back that he meant no offense which was so patently disingenuous I laughed out loud. And, of course, he reiterated his general thinking about my terrible writing.

So, since you are successful without writing skills, maybe it's not worth the investment. I was simply suggesting that if you ever wanted to learn how, there are many ways to do so. I would bet that even as a freelancer, you could get the New York Times to underwrite a class at your local community college.

I shouldn’t care but I do. The condescension and the certainty of the criticism were overwhelming.

In a final message, they wrote:

Clearly, I was focusing on the superficial. Your intellect and honesty far transcend the lack of facility with writing. The last thing you need is to add classes to what I'm sure is a very busy schedule. Nobody is good at everything and you are so good at so many other things, the writing really doesn't matter

This ridiculous exchange has been a minor distraction for days. Part of me wants to pick at the wound and ask for more information. What, precisely, is bad about my writing? Does everyone who reads my work think this? Part of me is certain this is just some asshole who is having some mean fun because they have that kind of free time.

To be clear, I am not fishing for compliments. This has simply gotten under my skin because I’m struggling with my writing. I have been since Hunger came out, thus the long delay between that book and my next book which will, hopefully, be out next year. I write every day but most of what I write ends up nowhere. I open a Word file and type into it but the ease with which I am used to writing is gone. All I can think about is how a given work will be received. I anticipate all the eventual criticism and probe my work for weakness and try to hone each piece to perfection, which doesn’t even exist, and then it feels like the best parts of the work have been whittled away. I am neither wholly insecure in my writing nor am I wholly confident. I know I can craft beautiful sentences and convey original thinking. I also know my general weaknesses and am always working to improve. But I miss the ease of writing. I miss the way I can find a good groove and make language sing.

Good faith criticism strengthens both how I think and how I communicate that thinking. Even if I bristle in the immediate, I always sit with criticism and try to learn from it. But then there is bad faith criticism, which finds its way to me on every single social media platform. It comes to my inboxes. It is mailed to my publisher and it all becomes a cacophony that renders me silent—the worst kind of feedback loop.

Increasingly, I think it’s time to opt out of that feedback loop. There are just too many opinions. People are acting like the world is one big Yelp! and that their feedback on anything and everything is vital. For example, today someone told me I was bad at Wordle, a low stakes word game, because I post my scores on Twitter. It took me four guesses to figure out the daily word which, I guess offended their sensibilities. It’s bewildering that they offered this criticism, out of nowhere. Theirs was not an opinion I needed to hear or take seriously. The best parts of the Internet are becoming the worst parts of the Internet. I have had enough, of all of it. I want to figure out how to extract myself from useless feedback loops that don’t serve me or my work well. Everyone is entitled to their opinions but I don’t have to entertain them. Those opinions are, frankly, none of my business.