You Hate Me

Meta
Title:	You Hate Me
Creator:	Arduinna
Date(s):	December 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom:	multi
Topic:	feedback, fiction writing
External Links:	online here, Archived version
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You Hate Me is an essay by Arduinna.

The essay was posted to Essays: Rants and Rambles.

The subject is feedback and con crit.

Excerpts

Since when does "I don't like your story" mean "I don't like you", or, even more extreme, "I hate you"?

Since when does "I don't think this author is a good writer" mean "I don't think this author is a good person"?

How does anyone connect those things like that?

I mean, do people think that "I don't like your cooking" really means "I hate you"?

Writing ability does not ' equal personality, or character. Any more than cooking ability, or painting ability, or musical ability, or the ability to ride a bike or skate or play basketball or any other damn thing in the world. What you can do is not who you are -- and people's opinions about what you can do is not the same thing as their opinions of you as a person.

There are people who have a gift for the English language that blows me away, whose ideas are scintillating and mind-opening, whose work I treasure and save for those days when I'm convinced the world has forgotten how to speak, much less write. I also happen to think that some of these authors are fairly despicable people, and I wouldn't want to be stuck in an elevator with them. There are people whose writing, in my opinion, bluntly sucks rocks, who are smart, witty, wonderful people who brighten the lives of everyone who knows them.