Do you fear the one-star review? Not everyone will like what you create. Create anyway.

Does your fear, that someone might not like what you create, keep you from creating?

Do not read the reviews

My cat, Pooh Hodges, before his untimely death on April 1, 2015, interviewed Steven Pressfield for The Write Practice,  for his column, Cat Talk, about Pressfields book, Do The Work. Pooh asked Mr. Pressfield how he handled the fear of shipping.

POOH

On Amazon Do The Work has 512 reviews, of these, 332 are five-star reviews and 29 are one-star reviews. How do you fight the fear of shipping when not everyone gets your message? I would rather cough up a hairball than get a negative review. (An update to the reviews on April 1, 2024. There are 6,492 reviews, of these 4,480 are five-star reviews, and 130 are one-star reviews)

PRESSFIELD

A professional writer (or actor or director or athlete) does not read reviews. I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me. Hemingway himself once said you can’t read reviews because “if you believe them when they tell you, you’re great, you have to believe them when they tell you-you’re a bum.”

You are not a bum

If one person didn’t like a book I published, I would tend to focus on the one hater.

I don’t know why a negative comment would get stuck in our brains when there are comments that are positive and encouraging. Even Steve Martin, who is really funny, remembers negative reviews. (And, yes, auto editor, I want to say really. Because he is not just funny. He is really funny.) And what is also true, is that you might not think he is funny.

I was very vulnerable to criticism for many years. I could read a bad review and remember it my whole life.
— Steve Martin

It is as though the negative comment confirms in our minds what we truly believe. The lies we believe. The lie that what we create is not good. The lie that says if our art is not good then we are not good. Who are you trying to kid anyhow? Pretending to be a writer. Pretending to be an artist. Go back to bed. Sell your easel, and throw away your pencil. Quit writing and clean the litter boxes. 

One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.
― Al David

The voice from the depth of the earth that mocks and taunts. The lying voice that wants us to keep our truth inside our head, the words hidden, locked away, and our paintings in the tubes and the recesses of our brains, our canvasses blank.

The voice of Resistance. The Resistance that Steven Pressfield talks about in his book, The War of Art. 

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”
― Steven Pressfield

I think I need to write on the inside of my arm with a magic marker, “I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me.”

I do give a damn.

Maybe that is the problem. I see my art as me.

I am not my art.

You are not your art.

You are you. You are not hanging on the wall. Your painting is.
Your joke is not you. It is a joke.
Your song is not you. It is a song.
Your cake is not you. It is a cake.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made. Truth.

Not everyone will like what you create

It is not possible to please everyone. How do I know this? Because not everyone likes to eat sardines. I love sardines.

David Leddick, in his book, I’m Not For Everyone. Neither Are You, wrote, “You must care about the work but not care about the criticism.”

It is time to stop paying attention to criticism. It is time to stop giving other people power. It is time to be bold like Steven Pressfield and Mozart and Steve Martin who kept acting.