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The Gratitude of the Ego-Surfing Writer
By Jenna Glatzer I live in perpetual fear that someone, somewhere, is writing something nasty about one of my books.
I think it surprises people to find out that I’m still this neurotic. I fear that I’m supposed to be more evolved than this, and that writers look to me with hope, seeing their future in me.
Sure, when we start out, we’re all neurotic. We don’t know if we’re any good, after all, and we are terrified to send out those first queries. Worse, when we actually get an assignment, we’re scared the editor is going to find out we’re inexperienced hacks. When it comes time to send in that assignment, our hands are so sweaty that we can barely press the “send” button without drenching the mouse. Surely we made some egregious mistakes. The formatting is wrong, or we didn’t properly attribute facts, or the lead is too long, or... something is going to brand us as amateurs, we’re certain.
But we manage to turn in that article, or that book, and then we take tranquilizers until the editor finally says it’s good, at which point, we faint, and then prepare to go through it all again.
I think writers believe—or at least hope, deep down—that this feeling goes away with experience. It does lessen, to be fair. I still get nervous when turning in a first assignment to a new-to-me editor, but I’m past the point of wondering if I can make it in this business. I know I can, and I know my editors like me and count on me. So the mouse remains nice and dry.
But as far as I can tell, the pit-in-the-stomach dread that comes with searching for new book reviews doesn’t fully go away.
I’m on my tenth book now. The first few were small books for children, mostly sold directly to schools, so they didn’t get many reviews. But I can no longer count, keep track of, or even find all the reviews of my newer books. Google and I have a love-hate relationship when it comes to ego-surfing.
For those unfamiliar with the term, ego-surfing is searching for your own name in search engines. Every few weeks, I plug in either my name or the titles of my newest books into Google and try to remember to breathe as I go through the results.
Of course I’m eager to find my book reviewed in a big magazine, newspaper, or e-zine, where the reviewer got paid for the review or at least got the book free. Those reviews are important to me on a professional level, but on a personal level, I’m not as tied to them. The way I figure it is that if the person wanted the book badly enough, he would have bought it or gotten it from the library. Professional reviewers, on the other hand, often get the luck of the draw—the editor sends them books that they may or may not have had much of an interest in reading otherwise. There’s not as much at stake for me emotionally when a reviewer isn’t particularly interested in my subject matter.
No, it’s the real reviews that leave terror in my heart. The ones that come from readers who plunked down their hard-earned money on my book because they expected it to be good and now see fit to tell the world what they thought of it. The ones on blogs, personal web pages, reader review sites, or small publications that don’t supply reviewers with books.
A couple of weeks ago, I summoned up my bravery for another Google round. I try to do this when I’m in a good frame of mind and there are no sharp objects in the room, just in case. There has been no thickening of my skin, no jaded apathy, not even the learned skill of pretending that reviews don’t affect me. The truth is that my experiences have been excellent, and that the number of positive reviews have far, far outnumbered the couple of negative reviews. Somehow, that doesn’t ease the tension.
It is then that I feel for celebrities.
I think of my little world and how open I’ve left myself for public scrutiny, and then I imagine the people who really leave themselves out for public scrutiny. I start to feel lousy for ever having a Mariah Carey joke on my website, or making a snide comment about Michael Bolton. The whole world feels entitled to have and express opinions about anyone who’s chosen a career in the arts, from their talents to their personalities to their wardrobe choices and parenting abilities. There are entire sites dedicated to hating particular celebrities.
And as I sat there nervously searching for reviews, I pictured Mariah and Michael sitting by their computers doing the same thing. Wanting to see what people were saying about them, but scared to look. I pictured them as real people, maybe for the first time, and I didn’t envy them.
Some reviewers are keenly aware that authors—famous or not—are real people, and they review accordingly. When they have negative things to say, they criticize, but without going for the author’s jugular. When they have positive things to say, they praise, without ever knowing that the author just might see it.
And so it was that in the midst of these thoughts, I came across my favorite ever ego-surfing result.
It was one of those lists that people forward to their friends to get to know each other better. You know the kind, with the “do you prefer bacon or croutons” and “what was your first car” types of questions. Well, one of the questions was “What’s the best book you’ve read this year?” On her site, a woman answered “Outwitting Writer’s Block and Other Problems of the Pen.”
I quit ego-surfing for the night because I couldn’t bear to spoil a high like that. That moment was worth all the queasy-stomach dread.
To all the people out there who post reviews on Amazon, or on blogs, or review for newspapers and e-zines, if you ever wonder if your words matter to an author, allow me to answer for the vast majority of authors everywhere, regardless of fame or experience: Yes. You have no idea how much.
Your words have the power to keep an author going on a tough day when she’s thinking of throwing in the towel, or to convince her to never write another word for publication again. You know how much writing matters to you? That’s how much it matters to us, too. And when your work matters to you so much that it feels like an essential part of your identity, you can’t help but care if other people think it’s any good.
There are few greater kindnesses in the world than to say good things about a person behind her back.
My ego-surfing has led me to dozens of wonderful reviews the writers never told me about. I suppose they never expected me to see them. Several are even anonymous, or with no contact information included, leaving it impossible for me to write to them personally to thank them. The thing that makes it so amazing is that they’re not expecting to be thanked.
There are still plenty of people out there who love books and authors, and will support us with fervor as long as we keep putting in our best efforts to write things worthy of being read. I want to take this opportunity to say “thank you” to those people, and to let you know that you make this kind of work worthwhile. If not for you, I’d have gone back to writing terrible poetry and sticking to my journal. And to the new writers who were hoping I’d tell them that you get immune to negativity once your career is solid: I’m sorry. I’m afraid writer neurosis is a permanent condition. Jenna Glatzer is the editor-in-chief of Absolute Write (www.absolutewrite.com) and Absolute Markets (www.absolutemarkets.com). She has written for hundreds of national and online markets, including Physical, Woman's World, Woman's Own, Salon.com, and Contemporary Bride. She's a contributing editor at Writer's Digest and the best-selling author of Outwitting Writer's Block and several other books, which you can find at www.absolutewrite.com/jenna/books.htm. If you buy her books, your sex appeal will skyrocket.
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