Okay, so let’s get one thing straight – I don’t consider myself famous! My kids sometimes think I am because I’ve been in the newspaper and on the radio a bit over the last few years, trying to make myself difficult for publishers to ignore (come on, publishers – I’m here *waves*), and because I teach creative writing and mentor writers too. Also, they love their mum!
At the same time I’m not exactly unknown – which is starting to lead to some interesting phenomena…
Since my novels are still sitting on publishers’ desks, I’m yet to reach the level of exposure most writers do once they publish a novel. I’m therefore also yet to receive any hate mail (I hope I never do!), or (*shudder*) bad reviews (only good ones so far, from highly respected reviewers too, see here!). Even so, my website recently attracted the unwanted attention of someone in France who frequently sent up to 2,000 requests per minute to my blog, making my site kinda explode. I had a website escalation expert look into this, and it was completely targeted, aimed specifically at me. Hm, that’s no good 🙁
Anyway, these things happen from time to time on the internet, so my expert and I did what we could to make the requests stop, contacted ISP providers and reinstalled my website’s entire backend. But that’s about all we can do now – apart from let it go.
For the fighter in me, that’s hard to do. But I also need to take my own advice…
You see, a few months ago I was asked in a talk I gave at the NSW Writers’ Centre on online author promotion about how I cope with trolls. Trolls are people on social media who come at you looking for an argument. They criticise without due cause and want only to put you down to make themselves feel better. Trolling can have quite an emotional impact, as illustrated by the recent Jonathan Ross saga here, though the thing to remember about trolls is that they don’t represent ‘everybody’. So my advice is/was to not let yourself get dragged into small arguments online (unless you’re James Blunt, who’s rather good at responding to trolls: see here!). There will always be mean-hearted people in the world, there’s no changing them and no stopping them…
Instead, I told the audience – just let it go.
And yes, I know the fighter in you finds that hard to do. But there’s only so much in life you can fight. We have to pick our battles.
In the course of securing my website, I also recently decided to close some social media sharing accounts that I no longer used. One of them refused to let me delete my account – until I filed an official complaint with the Office of the Attorney General, Commonwealth of Virginia USA. Then they very quickly enabled me to delete my personal data and everything was fine. It still annoyed me, though – that I’d had to go to such lengths to get a response out of them. I wanted to continue complaining and expose the company (as their online profile makes them look more trustworthy then they are). But in the end I realised that I had what I wanted… so took my own advice again and just let it go.
When dealing with group politics, it’s the same thing. As the leader of a widely-attended writers’ group, I often find myself stuck in the middle between opposing forces. Writers are sensitive creatures and I have to tread as carefully around their interests as I would if those interests were my own. I love my writers! But after I’ve done everything I can to resolve conflict, I have to make myself take a step back. I don’t want to, because the perfectionist in me wants everyone to be 100% happy – I’m sure I could be doing more!
How much time do you invest in searching for the perfect resolution?
(me on the beach at Pipeline, Hawaii) Image by Bill Shapter.
But how much time do you invest in searching for the perfect resolution? Life is short and precious. If we try to perfect every detail, we can lose sight of that and the trolls and bullies win. Not everyone is going to want the best for you. Not everyone is going to understand you or what you’re trying to achieve and support that.
So me – I’m going to take my advice more, and let things go.
What about you? When faced with a tricky situation, one that brings out the fighter in you, what do you do?
In your search for a smooth ride through life, do you battle every wave, or only those promising a particularly emotional ride?
