Editor’s Picks — Top 10: The Hostile Reader Who Disturbs Your Writing
By: Dew Langrial
Tags: Writing, Readinglist, Self Improvement, Reading, Writing Tips

When you start writing, an imaginary reader starts reading every word you write. Would it affect your writing if this reader was hostile? What if this reader frightened you?

Our inner critic is one thing, but this hostile reader is a pain in the neck. This reader is a passive threat. She doesn’t say much but looks at every word you write as if she doesn’t like it.

The hostile reader fear goes further — it is a deep, often unrecognized fear of being wounded, maybe even destroyed, by what someone else has to say about our work. ~ Joli Jensen

Once in a while, a hostile reader comes along, and comments of this reader reinforce our fears. The hostile reader doesn’t care how you mustered up the courage to write, how you faced your self-doubts, and what was the purpose of your writing. She grabs one article and shreds your work to pieces. Or does she?

Though the fear is not unwarranted, a better approach would be to think of the hostile reader as a blessing — because your writing can never be so watertight that nobody can criticize it. The hostile reader doesn’t want anything but a good reading experience. The reader is not as threatening as our fear of a hostile reader that stops us from writing what we want to write.

Hostile readers have varying degrees of hostility. Most of them leave a snide remark that hurts. Some are grammar police, and very few of them, say 1 in 1000, actually try to belittle you as a writer.

If you rethink, you will find that you always consider every hostile reader to be the belittling type — it’s similar to imagining every earthquake to be 7.8 on the Richter scale.

When we’re in the grip of the hostile reader fear, submitting our work makes us feel as if we are throwing ourselves to the wolves. ~ Joli Jensen

The threat of a hostile reader can never leave a writer. But the hostile reactions of readers make us evaluate everything. The idea, the examples, and the flow of logic in our story.

You and your work are two different things. Every writing piece is a thought you have a right to change without notice. Your work always presents your actions, not you.

Taking into account what others might say about our work is a valuable way to make what we write more thorough and comprehensive. ~ Joli Jensen

There is no way to grow as a writer but by accepting criticism of some sort. If out of your readers, one in one thousand is a hostile reader, be thankful. Most writers don’t get 1000 reads — like ever.

Joli Jensen, in her book, Write No Matter What, writes about the opposite of a hostile reader. It is the ‘unrealistic hopes of being understood and admired.’

She goes on to say, “The opposite of the hostile reader fear is the euphoric reader hope. When I was interviewing British literary editor Diana Athill, she told me that much of her job involved telling her writers — including V. S. Naipaul and Jean Rhys — over and over, ‘Darling, you’re wonderful.’ ” Even the successful writers she edited ‘continually craved affirmation’.

“Lots of us are like Ralphie in A Christmas Story, who dreams his teacher will swoon and write A++++++ on his Red Ryder BB gun essay. Instead, she corrects his grammar, gives him a C+, and warns him, “You’ll shoot your eye out.” We need to find a realistic middle path between our hope for swoons and our fear of humiliation,” Joli Jensen concludes.