What your favorite authors have in common

It took until last week to realize it, but here is something all of Writer Abroad’s favorite authors have in common: one-star reviews on amazon.

These are fantastic, funny, and talented writers. And they endure a seemingly endless wave of crappy reader reviews.

How did Writer Abroad come to this conclusion? Well, she got her first one-star review last week. And she’s not going to lie—seeing it for the first time was kind of like being punched in the gut.

But what helped ease the pain as quickly as it arrived was realizing that all of her favorite authors had one-star reviews too. All of them. Put your work out there and there is only one guarantee: it’s going to get everything from a one-star review to a five-star review.

Why? Because we all like to read different things and we all have different backgrounds and senses of humor. There’s a book for everyone but not everyone will like a book. It’s reality. One person loves David Sedaris. Another doesn’t get his humor at all.

And often people who give reviews haven’t even read the book they are reviewing, so they can’t be taken too seriously. One person who recently left a review for Writer Abroad gave her book five stars but said in the review that they hadn’t even read it yet. So there you have it. Good and bad on both ends of the non-reader reviewers of your book.

However, most writers, by the time they have actually published a book, are pros at rejection and humiliation. Writer Abroad has been through enough in the last ten years as a writer to know that if you want to be a writer, you must have two things: courage to put your writing out in the world and a thick skin to survive its existence in the public sphere.

Otherwise, you might as well apply for law school.