Have you ever noticed that sucessful artists have haters? Lots of them!
On the literary front, there are haters of Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, E.L. James, Danielle Steel and Stephenie Meyer to name a few!
Where do these haters come from? Do you ever wonder? Why in the hell would you obsess about a book you hate? Stop reading it! Get a book you DO like! Read that! If these haters put as much energy into their own lives, their own work; I'm sure they'd be more successful, happy individuals.
It doesn't stop at literature. There are haters of certain musicians and bands. Wtf? Don't listen to them! Change the radio station! Don't post on You Tube why you think they suck to high heaven!
What really blows my mind is that some of the very most successful books and musicians get the most hateful reviews. I just don't get it. I read a blog last week that ripped E.L. James and her 50 Shades of Grey a new one! It was total mean snark! And then the review was followed by dozens of hateful comments, agreeing with the reviewer. Listen up haters, E.L. James did SOMETHING right when she wrote that series. She's now a bestselling author and has shit loads more money. I think the Harry Potter lady as I affectionately call her, J.K. Rowling lives in a damn castle now! That lady used to live in a freaking trailer, unable to pay her electric bill!! I think she's sold more books than Stephen King now. But who can forget all the crazy ass parents threatening to ban her books from their children's shelves for the scary witch craft inside!? Come on! Seriously? I remember dating this guy who had a little girl and he made a really stupid comment about those "evil books". Please!
Then we have all the haters of Danielle Steel who has sold like a gozillion romance novels and has had tons of them made into movies. I've been to many a writer's meeting and listened to writers blab on about how she doesn't know how to write. Uh...well, newsflash...she's made a career of not knowing how to write books and making millions!
What about all the people who think Stephen King is Satan himself? I haven't run across many SK haters in a while but back in the 80's and 90's, I'd hear from many of them. I think they are in the same group as the J.K. Rowling haters who fear their children will read his books and try to raise their dead pets from the grave.
On the music front, there is a group of Nickelback haters! Really? What for? Are you deaf? Why would you hate Nickleback? And there are so many musicians people love to hate.
Where is all this hate coming from? Is hate a sign of success? It most definitely IS a sign of success and good things to come! Do you have haters? Have you received strange hate mail, horrid reviews that scream I HATE YOU AND YOUR BOOK or worse, have you been featured in a tabloid or newspaper or blog as a hated artist? Congratulations! You're on your way up!
And if you're lucky like me, you have haters who hate you so much, they create a hate site for you! My beloved hate site seemed to fuel my career, making me a best selling author at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
If people hate you, it could mean that they really envy you or maybe they don't have the guts to create the book, the movie, the music, the art that YOU create. They don't have the guts to put it out there themselves or it could be that they're a struggling artist so they have to put down all the very successful artists out there. I couldn't help but think this was true when I read the mean blog on E.L. James. Get real, haters. James didn't intend for 50 Shades of Grey to be some literary masterpiece. She intended to write an erotic novel to make women squirm and she succeeded! People like to tear her work to bits, analyzing it, her characters, her use of vocabulary, her use of plot, her world building techniques. I will tell you this. Her number one technique was: How does this chapter move the plot foward? Did the chapter make me hornier, make me hungrier for Christian Grey? That's about as complicated as it got..because we're talking about X-rated beach reads meant to drive house wives wild! She succeeded! Big time!!! AND I'm happy for the woman!
What about all the Stephenie Meyer haters? All the people who hated the teen vamp books that were hugely successful and made into movies. Are you freaking jealous you didn't come up with the concept yourself and make millions? I have heard many a writer say Stephenie can't write. Sure she can't. Tell her bank she can't write. They'd cough up all their money laughing!!!
So why is it that people love to hate? And of course all these writers and artists have fans too. The fans keep them going and help them wade through the hate shit!
One of my books has received some truly hateful reviews while receiving rave reviews at the same time. I even received hate emails about Circle City: Lord of the Wolfen. I've been told by more than one successful artist that it means I'm on the right track. If you don't piss off half of your readers, evoke some kind of strong emotions, you aren't at your best.
And getting stalkers and hate sites along the way is part of the game too! Every new stalker means you're getting better. Seriously. Research this yourself if you don't believe. Choose the most successful author you can think of. Go read their reviews on Amazon. Go search for a hate site on them. Eye opening.
I'd like to thank all my haters for hating me. I'm happy to piss you off, make you think, make you squirm, make you feel, make you wish you loved like some of my characters and make you hate. That's what I'm here for. You're welcome.
Keep Reading!
~Alisha
4 comments:
Good post and so true.
Thanks for stopping by, Rusty Nail. I appreciate your comments.
I read once about a study where someone taught some chimps how to paint, as in art painting. They turned out some really interesting stuff.
Then they started paying the chimps peanuts to produce art. Inasmuch as you can call anything by a chimp "quality," the quality of their work declined noticeably. Basically they were just randomly slapping paint on canvas just to get their peanuts, where before they'd been making a better effort.
I have seen similar occurring with human artists of all stripes. And this is why I don't judge the merits of someone's art by how much money they're making.
I do not go out of my way to hate someone and I don't get the hatefest against Nickelback either, but I can also admit that Stephenie Meyer's work is not what it could be--she came up with some interesting concepts, but she wrote them quite badly.
Just because she's made millions doesn't change that. A Powerball winner has made millions too. It doesn't mean they've actually done anything special.
You can like whatever you like and it's no threat to me. I just thought I'd point all that out.
Thanks for your comments, Dana. Your argument fell on deaf ears though. All of the artists I mentioned were incredibly poor before they made it big so if anyone thinks their writing is terrible, it isn't because they just wrote whatever in the world with no skill at all to make the moolah. Writers make very little money. Even some NY Times Best Selling authors make figures that are surprisingly low, so the chimp analogy doesn't really fit. And someone who wrote many, many full length novels and turned them into a series doesn't compare to a person who hit the freaking Powerball by choosing some random numbers. Whether her writing is bad as you say or not, her book appealed to millions. Her success is what made her wealthy. Again I don't see how that compares to a person who won the lottery. And maybe it is her concept that won her fans. Who knows. Btw, I'm not a fan of hers but I'm certainly not a hater either. Just thought I'd point all that out as well.
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