A Single Hateful Comment Had Me Questioning My Love of Writing
By: Zada Kent
Tags: Mental Health, Writing, Life, Life Lessons, Writing Tips

I fell into a deep dark hole for three weeks after receiving my first hateful comment. I didn’t write a single thing. My love of writing was missing and my self-confidence was nowhere to be found. Finally, after three weeks of moping around, I had an epiphany.

It wasn’t the nasty comment or the grouchy commenter’s fault I hadn’t written anything in weeks. It was my own reaction that was holding me back and stifling my creativity.

The good news was that falling into the abyss was my own doing. It meant I could choose to climb back out and pick up the pen again. I just needed a plan for how I was going to deal with any future hateful comments.

Don’t take it personally.

The negative comment I received was on a personal essay about my family where I poured my feelings onto the page. It was as if the response was directed at my very being — my personal thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. It felt like an attack on my ability to be a good parent due to the nature of the piece.

I needed to remind myself not everyone’s opinion truly matters. I chose to share a personal story in the hopes it would help someone else through similar circumstances.

I’m a writer and a professional. Choosing to write for a living means choosing to focus on the message I want to share with the world. It does not mean spending time taking hateful comments personally.

Not all advice is good.

As a newbie writer, I continually soak up advice from several online writers in the hopes it will improve my craft and overall success. Early on, one of these nuggets of wisdom applied to readers’ comments on my posts, and I assumed that it was basically the standard rule that all writers adhered to.

This long-time writer told me if I received comments on a piece it was inherent I respond to all of them. Every. Single. One.

She told me my replies were directly responsible for building — or not building — my readership. However, I hadn’t yet considered that just because something is dispensed as writing advice doesn’t mean it’s writing law.

I’m sure my colleague’s recommendation was given to me in the spirit of being helpful. Her advice was easy enough to follow when the comments on my work were positive, or at least neutral.

But just because someone gives you advice doesn’t mean you have to take it. Or use it without adjusting it for yourself. Or that it’s even good advice.

I soon realized that just because something worked well for her, didn’t mean it would work well for me.

When I read that first dreadful comment, my heart dropped and drowned in the stomach acid churning in my gut. I froze.

Do I respond to this?

How do I respond to this?

Don't reply with anger.

Because most haters’ replies are dripping with indignation, it’s easy to see red and fire back. But doing this will solve absolutely nothing. If a hater is persistent and ignoring them is not an option, respond logically, honestly, and calmly. Your reply to their comment needs to diffuse the situation, not inflate it.

Most haters’ comments are emotionally driven, causing them to lack any logical argument to what you’ve written about. Sometimes asking them for scientific proof of their argument can squash the conversation from going any further. But be careful here. The internet is full of untruths and they may think you’ve given them the green light to continue their exasperating chatter.

I was too distraught over my hater’s comment to reply with some logical thought-provoking request for a scientific reason for their argument though.

Kill them with kindness.

When dealing with an angry person — face to face or online — sometimes what diffuses their anger most quickly is kindness. Tempers and negative emotions can be contagious, so responding with unexpected kindness can subdue the animosity before it grows into something too big to handle.

Of course, sometimes kindness isn’t enough. I tried to keep my response to my first hater polite and short. I thought I was on the right track because I kept it neutral. I thought it was non-engaging, non-threatening.

“Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts.”

Stupidest. Mistake. Ever.

Don’t engage with haters.

Simply thanking them for reading and sharing their opinion was the most neutral response I could think of. I didn’t realize that replying in this way would mean something different for the commenter.

I don’t think it would have mattered what I wrote in my response. I could have written, “Come at me, bro!” and would have gotten the same reply dripping with spite.

After falling for this bait twice (I was a slow learner, I guess), I realized my mistake:

Interaction in any way with this particular individual was considered an invitation for argument.

I should have kept my mouth shut. Sometimes ignoring a ‘problem’ — a hater in this case — can be the best option.

If all else fails…

Sometimes there is no amount of logic, kindness, or ignoring that can thwart an online hater. Some people are just miserable and fall into the habit of projecting their unhappiness onto others.

Depending on the platform you’re writing on, one of the following can ultimately discard your hater and their comments into the abyss of the internet — or at least keep them out of view.

MUTE

UNFOLLOW

DELETE

BLOCK

REPORT

Ultimately, ignoring my hater’s responses (they ended up remarking on three of my posts) was what worked for me. After trying to be nice with my first neutral reply, I simply refused to engage any more. That has kept my first hater from ever coming back around to commenting again on my work.