A Resolution I Can Stick With // Dana Ewachow

Dana Ewachow shares her New Year's resolution to spread love instead of negativity to fellow authors.

OnJanuary first, people take part in a strange ritual. While nursing champagne hangovers and wondering how they managed to get to sleep with half of their clothes on, they make up lists of intense resolutions to change their lives for the better.

The average person will stick with their resolution for the first few weeks before their will power starts to fade, and they give up on the goal by mid-February.These statistics don’t show the limits of our willpower—they show a problem with our expectations. We have a nasty habit of setting up goals that are too high and then get disappointed when we can’t even graze them with our fingertips. We say: I will go to the gym every single day. I will become fluent in a new language by the end of the year. I will never eat a bite of junk food ever again.

Most years, I stay away from the ritual. I don’t like giving myself goals that my workload and other responsibilities will shove aside until I forget about them entirely. But this year, I thought I would give it a shot. I would pick a resolution to follow for the entire year, and I would beat the odds. My resolution: to let writers know when I loved their work.

Sharing Bad News

Being a writer is romanticized as this cozy, cushy job. People imagine that you live in a quiet cottage, far away from the noise of traffic and the stress of the morning rush. You sleep in, brew a cup of coffee and then sit at a desk to create a masterpiece, taking long breaks to look pensively out your window.

In reality, writing is not about antique typewriters and cardigans fromAnthropologie. It’s a hard job that can take a lot of effort and offer very little in return, whether that be financial compensation or praise.

Writers receive a lot of criticism, even before their work gets released to the public. They get rejection letters and reach publishing roadblocks. They get track changes and hand-written notes that they have to fix by their next deadline. And, when they finally get published, they get to wait for the reviews and fight the temptation to read the criticism about content that they can’t correct anymore. In these final stages, they can choose to ignore the negativity. They can put their heads down and move forward.

But sometimes, that negativity is impossible to avoid. People send it directly to them. Readers share their negative opinions on social media and then tag the authors to pop up in their notifications. It’s like getting a knock on the door, only to look through the peephole to see a middle finger.

Don’t@ Them

Authors have vented about this cruel practice online. Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dreamhouse, tweeted the instructions to never tag authors in negative reviews, complete with emojis of clapping hands. Rebecca Makkai, author of TheGreat Believers and Music for Wartime, wrote a similar comment but decided to punctuate her words with orange emojis instead. She compared tagging authors on bad or mediocre reviews to walking up to someone to let them know that you hated their fashion choices: “Can you imagine me tapping your shoulder and going ‘Hey, I wanted to like your sweater, and I know lots of other ppl do, but I think it’s too tight and I don’t like blue’???”

Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You, gave her Twitter followers a quick PSA: “You have every right not to like a book, and you have every right to say whatever you want about it. But please don’t tag the author if you didn’t like it.It serves no purpose other than to be rude. We are humans with feelings too. Thanks!” She wrote this after someone tagged her in a review for LittleFires Everywhere, giving it 0 stars.

Angie Thomas, author of TheHate U Give and On the Come Up, also reminded her followers that writers are people with feelings and that there is no good reason to tag them. “I said don’t tag authors in reviews and someone said they’ll throw my books away now. Do you, boo.”

Sara Nović, author of Girl at War, receives the news through email instead of a notification on Twitter or Instagram: “Hey all — friends, foes — don't tag or email writers in their bad reviews. If we're in the mood for a good panic attack, we can compulsively Google ourselves.”

They aren’t the only ones. There are plenty of authors who get rude comments and unwanted criticisms from readers and internet trolls who are just looking to ruin their day for the fun of it. It seems to be another challenge in the career.

Sending a Message

I figured that my New Year’s resolution would be to put some positivity forward. I would send this piece of positivity in a private message, not through a public tag. Maybe kind words could make an author feel better on a day when the job felt especially lonely or tiring. Maybe it would counteract the negativity brought on by random assholes who consider forwarding their one star-reviews to be a worthwhile hobby.

The goal is just to say thank you. Thank you for making me laugh, making me cry, making me fall in love with characters, making me envious of your talent, making me stare at a book cover for too long. Thank you for giving me an important lesson on language, reminding me that familiar words can transform in someone else’s hands. Thank you for hurting and healing me at the same time. And thank you for putting yourself out there. I’m grateful that you put the words on the page, and that I had the opportunity to read them.

I started the resolution already. I think it’s a habit I can stick to long after the February lull.

Dana Ewachow is a copywriter living in Toronto. Her fiction has been featured in Le Shindig and Graphite Publications. Her reviews and creative non-fiction have been featured in The Town CrierMooney on TheatreIX Daily, and Rabble. She has played an obnoxious bard named Chaddeus (Level 7) for almost two years.

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