[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers.
[00:14] Emily: Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Rachel: I'm Rachel.
[00:19] Emily: And I'm Emily.
[00:20] Rachel: And today we want to talk about growing a thick skin. So this topic came from a suggestion from a listener. So if you have any suggestions for episodes you want us to cover, don't forget to email them in at [email protected]. This question came from Holly, so I will read it, and then let's jump in and start discussing. One piece of advice I hear a lot about writing or wanting to become an author is that you have to grow a thick skin. How does one actually do that? How do authors grow a thick skin? When it comes to feedback, rejections, award results and reviews, I'm not even an author yet, and I get secondhand anxiety when I read reviews about other people's books. How do these thick skinned authors pick themselves up after a major blow? That's a great question, Holly. Thank you so much for asking this, because it's a wonderful mindset thing for us to yeah.
[01:23] Emily: And the answer is going to probably shock most of you, which is that you don't need a thick skin. It's okay to have a thin skin. We're going to go down a hustle rabit hole.
[01:41] Rachel: I'm sure we have a lot to.
[01:42] Emily: Talk about, but I just feel like this advice that just this expectation that people need to have thick skins and need to be able to take criticism and not have human feelings about it is just so damaging.
[01:58] Rachel: Oh, yeah. There is automatically in this question, there's a binary, someone with thin skin, someone with thick skin. And the idea is that, number one, publishing or being an author necessitates a thick skin. But that thick skin gives to me that image of a hardened person. You're unaffected by the world around you. You let things just, like, blow right off, roll right off your back uncaring. And the reality is that that doesn't have to be true and that most people don't have this type of attitude, unpopular opinion, maybe. People with thick skins in the way that I just described usually have a really hard time relating to other people. Usually have a lot of or they're suffering. They're suffering. Basically.
[02:50] Emily: There's a lot going on underneath the skin.
[02:53] Rachel: Yeah. Usually that thick skin is a defense mechanism, is a coping mechanism, not like a healthy way to move through your life. Now, of course, that's a generalization. So, like, asterisks, please don't come at us because you're like, no, I'm very healthy with my thick skin. Amazing. But I do think that there's a perception that in order to be successful, you do have to shut down the more vulnerable side of yourself.
[03:22] Emily: The emotions. Yeah, it's total patriarchy. Emotions are bad. We should never show our messy emotions. Like, acting human and being human and being affected by things that hurt is somehow bad.
[03:42] Rachel: It's like, weak.
[03:43] Emily: It's weak. Yeah, absolutely. And I truly think that that is a disservice, because if you're coming at this trying to grow a thick skin, then you're kind of disconnecting yourself from what you care about.
[04:00] Rachel: Right.
[04:01] Emily: You're disconnecting yourself from the thing that you're passionate about. Like, our art comes from our hearts, and to a certain extent, it's going to be vulnerable, which means that you're going to be putting yourself in positions in which you're vulnerable. And it's like vulnerability leads to reactions, emotional human reactions that are super normal. And so I think there's this image of thick skin where it's like, you've got this kind of armor around you. You're like living in this shell. And so when people hurl stuff at you, it doesn't penetrate. And I think a more beautiful image that I think we want to try to lead you guys into is this idea of people give you their opinions and you soak them in and you process them and you send them back out in the world in a more beautiful way.
[04:52] Rachel: Right?
[04:53] Emily: That is what I want us to kind of take away from this episode, is like, we have to be able to process those things when they happen to us, because that is how we get a in relationship with what we actually want with our art.
[05:09] Rachel: Right.
[05:09] Emily: We're going to talk about feedback, and if you're not able to really take in and process your own reaction to feedback, then you're not going to be able to figure out what you actually want to do with your story. So that's really important. But also, just the ability to understand your own reactions to things is important to understanding why you care and why you're showing up and why it matters to you. So we can't put that wall up or we're going to disconnect ourselves from the deep meaning of our stories, in my opinion.
[05:39] Rachel: Yeah, I completely agree. So I would almost take Holly's question and reframe it to my own version, because what Holly is asking is that sometimes this hurts, sometimes writing hurts. How do I make it not hurt? Or what do I do about that? Hurt? Yes. So that's kind of the way I would think about this question, because the reality is that it doesn't always feel good. We're not going to shame our negative emotions, and we're not going to try to bury them in order to create that armor. That's not what this episode is about. This episode is about, okay, it's a reality that we experience vulnerability, and that vulnerability can sometimes lead to pain or to uncomfortableness or whatever negative emotion that we experience. And what do we do about that? Where do we start to maybe if I'm picturing a balance scale, how do we bring the more difficult sides of our emotions more in line with where we want to be? Perhaps that's what we're going to be talking about.
[06:42] Emily: I think you can start to talk about humans.
[06:46] Rachel: Yeah.
[06:46] Emily: Because we are humans, we are animals, and we are hardwired to want belonging, right. We are hardwired to want to be seen and understood and validated. Right. That is human. It is so normal.
[07:01] Rachel: Yeah.
[07:02] Emily: Art is a subjective and personal vulnerable attempt at connection, right? And that connection is going to like, you are going to connect so deeply with some people in some circumstances and you are not going to connect with other people in other circumstances. And that is a reality of art. And I think that that is important because sometimes I'll hear writers say, like, I want my art to be basically bulletproof. I don't want it to be able to be criticized. I want it to be loved by everyone. And that is not like, it's just not. And so the reality of those two things, right, that we're human and we want to connect and that our art is never going to connect with everyone, means that we're going to experience these moments that Holly's talking about, inevitably. And that's not a bad thing. It's part of the process. It's part of putting yourself out in the world. It's part of putting your art out in the world. It's part of finding connection with the people you want to find connection with. And so I'm so glad that you brought this question to us, Holly, because we have to talk about how to work through those moments, because they are inevitable and we need to expect them and we need to embrace them and we need to understand that they're going to happen and we can find ways to work through them.
[08:20] Rachel: Yes. So let's start with baseline in Golden May, we do not shame any of our emotions. The first step on this journey is to stop shaming your emotions when you feel uncomfortable. So let's say that you are hit with some feedback that hurts you a little bit. And I'm not talking about feedback that's meant to rip you apart where someone's intentionally coming after you. I'm talking about like, oh, that stung. I really wish they like, it could be either, but I'm talking about like, that is a separate case where the problem in that situation is not you. The problem is that person. But in the case that your feedback stung, we're not going to be like, oh, I shouldn't be feeling so uncomfortable about this, or like, oh, that shouldn't have hurt my feelings. So we're wiping that clean and we're saying, oh, I'm feeling something. What is it? What am I feeling? So we start with what is the emotion that we're experiencing and why are we experiencing it in any given time? I think the awareness is a great place to start. When you do have this sting or you do have whatever is causing you to become uncomfortable, ask the why. What am I feeling? And why? Then we talk a lot about in all of our stuff, developing that solid mindset, that really strong belief structure about yourself and I mean, a couple core fundamental beliefs. I know this is not just like something you switch on. We talk about that a lot. But I'm talking about the belief of going from believing I require praise to believe I'm a good person to going to like I'm an amazing person no matter what anybody thinks about me, or like I believe in my own worth and value. And I don't need a positive review or a negative review to change anything about life. Those are like core beliefs that we hold about ourselves that we learn to develop over time through our programs, through tenacious writing, through the mindset work that we do. A lot of that has to do with hustle culture and letting go of the beliefs about hustle culture. Hustle culture's number one thing is basically that your worth is tied to your productivity and attached to that is how much money you make and what people think about you. And if we can draw a line and separate that and say my worth is not attached to those things, my worth is not attached to my productivity, my worth is not attached to how many books I sell. My worth is not attached to the number of positive or negative reviews that I get or whatever rating someone has rated my particular story. If we can separate those things and start to hold the beliefs that I am valuable no matter what, I am loved no matter what, I do hold worth no matter what, and my books are worthy of existing no matter what. When we start with those core beliefs, it becomes a lot easier to take these stinging feelings with a grain of salt, with like, okay, I can feel these. And I also don't have to let this derail my entire belief system about myself. We are not diving into all of the different ways that you can build those beliefs because it's a lot. It takes work, it takes time, it takes practice, trust, grace, come dive into our other mindset resources in order to learn more about those things. Because if you're sitting there right now thinking like, well, no, I fully believe that one negative review means that I'm not as valuable as I should be, regardless of what you probably would not actually say those things. But if you are holding that belief where any type of negativity about you or your story is a direct tie to your impact on the world, your value that you bring to the world, then this is something that you need to focus time and effort on. Focus time and effort in this mindset area to untangle these really central belief systems about yourself and build the stronger version, the healed version of Anti Hustle, which is what we call it in all of our work.
[13:03] Emily: Yeah. So that's a huge thing that we're huge.
[13:09] Rachel: Let's go change your beliefs.
[13:12] Emily: Like Rachel said, all of our programs are designed with this in mind because we feel that this is like the number one this belief shift is the number one reason why people experience fulfillment and success in their writing life. It's directly tied to your writing success and success by all its definitions. Fulfillment, joy, sustainability, all those things. So all of our resources, including our free resources, right, all the podcast episodes, all of our email list, if you're not on our email list, definitely get on our email list, because we send out mindset tips all the time. Because this belief shift takes time and it takes intentional energy. And so exposing yourself to this kind of anti hustle talk is the best way to start to work through it. Some additional resources that we could point you to that are off the top of my head is there is an incredible book called Laziness Does Not Exist by Devin Price that I would highly recommend. And then we've mentioned Amy McNee before, but her resources on Journaling and working through what it is that you actually believe that you want to reframe are really helpful as well. So those are two resources. I don't know if you have any others that come to mind, but get started on this.
[14:42] Rachel: Yeah. All of Kristen Kiefer's work. So you can go to Kristen Kiefer's website, which is hang on, we'll put.
[14:51] Emily: All this in the show notes.
[14:52] Rachel: Yeah, it's kristenker Co is her website, and she's a creative coach, and she is absolutely full on in this type of mindset work. Highly recommend her. She's creative wellness. So this absolutely is wrapped up in that.
[15:11] Emily: Yeah. So those are some places to start in addition to our resources. If this is something that you're like, oh, that is the stage that I am in. Definitely go check those out.
[15:21] Rachel: Yeah.
[15:21] Emily: Because it takes time. Be patient with yourself, but first step is to just feel your feelings and name them and don't shame them. There's nothing worse than when you're like, oh, my gosh, this person criticized my work and now I feel terrible about it, but I shouldn't feel terrible about it. And so now I'm going to treat myself terribly because I feel terrible about it. And it's just this self perpetuating cycle of now you're attacking yourself for your feelings. So we don't want to do that. We always want to say, like, it's totally human and valid that I'm feeling this right now. For whatever reason I'm feeling it and sit with it and name it so important.
[16:05] Rachel: Absolutely. So go do all that mindset work, pause, go get healed, come back.
[16:14] Emily: Easy peasy.
[16:15] Rachel: Easy peasy. It's ongoing. This also is an ongoing thing. Then if you are feeling pretty solid about your mindset, you're feeling like, no, I actually feel very confident in my own worth. I'm not too worried about whatever fundamental core beliefs might be throwing my off. I feel pretty good about that. Okay, awesome. So let's talk for a second about the right way to do feedback. Okay, so let me back up for a second. We talk a lot about what we call the right way to do feedback, because feedback is a communication tool. It helps us improve our work. But in no way is feedback supposed to make us feel like shit. I think that there is a belief that anytime you're getting feedback, if it makes you feel like shit, it's like good feedback. Like, it's supposed to make you feel bad. It's supposed to tear apart your story. It's supposed to make you question whether or not you really want to do this, because that means it's really helping you get better. It's like, no, that's incorrect. We have a whole episode on feedback. It's episode number five. It's called feedback. Should never feel like this. This is what we're talking about. You should not need to have what Holly describes as a thick skin in order to be neutral with getting feedback. I was going to say comfortable. But even to just be neutral getting feedback, you don't need a thick skin. What you need is to understand how to give and receive feedback and to find writing partners that also understand how to give and receive feedback. And that absolutely includes working with people in whatever industry you're choosing to work in or whatever publishing path you desire to work in. Finding people who also know how to give and receive feedback. There's some sort of perception that if you go the traditional path, it's also going to be entirely cut throughout and no one's going to ever give you praise. It doesn't have to be like that. Or if you go the self publishing path, you're going to pay an editor to rip your book to shreds, and you're just going to have to suffer through it until you fix it. It doesn't have to be like that. You can search out people who give you feedback that actually feels good, regardless of if it's criticism or praise. And that's like a mind blowing moment for some people when they start to understand how to be on the same page with giving and receiving feedback. So I highly recommend to go back to episode five and listen to Feedback Should Never Feel Like this because that episode outlines feedback that's done poorly and how to do feedback right. It just boils down to knowing what type of feedback to give and also knowing what type of feedback you are receiving, like where it is, what type of feedback it is. Holding back to those beliefs that you already have that whatever feedback you get does not determine your worth. It has nothing to do with your worth. You're already worthy. So you can kind of separate the personal feelings, like the personal harm, with just like, oh, I'm disappointed because I really wanted them to love this particular story. It kind of shifts you from feeling like feedback crumbles your world, to feeling like, wow, I can actually do something with this. And being able to know that the feedback you are getting, number one, you have a choice of what you do with it. And number two, it should always be actionable, giving you a way to implement it so it doesn't just leave you hanging with like, this sucked. And you're like what? That's not helpful.
[20:13] Emily: Yeah. So much of it comes down to communication and communicating what you need in the feedback that's being given to you and making sure that you are understanding what the other person is communicating in their feedback. Communication comes down to relationships and humans.
[20:36] Rachel: Right?
[20:36] Emily: And communication is messy and imperfect, and so you have to get to know each other as humans. I've been doing this with my agent over the last few months. Like, learning how she communicates and how I need to communicate for what I need, how I need to communicate my needs in terms of her feedback so that I understand it, so that I am getting the positive feedback that I want or that I need, so I understand what she's seeing. And so it's all about that communication and that relationship. And it makes it easier when you remember that it's human to human and we're all doing our best. And so go listen to that episode. What was it again? Five.
[21:17] Rachel: Number five. Episode number five. Yeah. I think writers feel like getting feedback is an immediate power imbalance. And by putting themselves in a power imbalance, you automatically make yourself feel vulnerable and defensive. Both of those two things at the same time. And that's just like a priming situation for creating all of these negative emotions that we again, don't want to shame, but that we can prepare for and try to shift. So we're not feeling those negative emotions. We're feeling excited, we're feeling positive, we're feeling encouraged. We're feeling challenged. And not challenged in a negative way, but challenged in like a, OOH, I'm going to go do this thing with my story. This will be really fun to yeah, that type of challenge. And I just listened to a rebecca Thorne has a TikTok. She wrote a cozy fantasy called you Can't Spell Treason Without T. And it's like a tea shop. I haven't read it. I was just looking at it because I saw this TikTok, but it's highly reviewed. So go look it out. Go look it up. I'm just going to verify that that is what it's actually called. But anyway, she wrote, you can't spell treason without T. That is the book. She had this TikTok that she just released a couple of days ago about like, when writers find an agent, they start that relationship coming from a power imbalance. And same thing with an editor, but really the power imbalance should go the other way. Where the author is the one in charge. It's like your work. It's your brain that this agent is trying to sell. It's like they are serving you in order to sell your book. They don't get paid unless they sell your book. We approach it from this validation standpoint of I need my agent to validate me, I need my editor to validate me. But really it's the flip side where.
[23:37] Emily: It serves the industry to make you think that no shade on individual agents and editors.
[23:43] Rachel: Yeah, I've had great experiences so far.
[23:46] Emily: But the industry as a whole, right. It's a hustle, culture driven industry, and it works in the industry's favor if all of its writers think that they need the validation of those higher up. And it takes effort to remember that's not the case.
[24:01] Rachel: Yeah, you're the one with the art. Exactly. So if you can try to reframe towards that way of, like this feedback that I'm getting, I am in power over. I am not requiring their validation in whatever shape or form you stand in. A little stronger of a way, you can look at that feedback what's the word I'm looking for? A little more neutrally, a little more objectively. You can look at that feedback objectively without feeling the sting or without feeling, like the need for their approval, because you don't need it.
[24:40] Emily: They don't know what is the right version of your story.
[24:43] Rachel: Right.
[24:43] Emily: There is no perfect version of your story. They're just giving their opinion. And yes, they've been in the industry for a while, and ideally, you're working with people who have a lot of experience, but it's your story. And they don't necessarily have they can't have the vision for your story in their head that you have for your story. And so ultimately, you have to be the one who makes those. Yeah, okay. I love that we started with feedback. I think that's so important. But I love that Holly outlined a couple of things because we can build anxiety, right, for what's coming down the road. It's like, oh, I'm working on this book. I haven't even finished it, but I'm afraid of rejection.
[25:22] Rachel: Yeah, right.
[25:23] Emily: So let's talk about rejection next.
[25:26] Rachel: Yes.
[25:27] Emily: How do we prepare ourselves for rejection?
[25:29] Rachel: Right?
[25:30] Emily: Because that's one of those moments that's inevitable if you're going to go in especially the traditional route. And this one, my best advice circles back to the beginning about that self belief. Because if you don't believe in your book and you are seeking validation, right. If you are seeking an agent to validate that your story is worthy, that rejection is going to hurt so much more than if you do the work ahead of time to believe in your story, that doesn't mean the rejection won't hurt. But for instance, I once wrote a short story, this was years ago, and I submitted it to several short story what are they called? Anthologies.
[26:22] Rachel: Anthologies.
[26:23] Emily: Magazines.
[26:24] Rachel: I remember that short story. I know.
[26:28] Emily: And I was in this place where I was stuck and frustrated with my novel work in progress. I was like, I'm just going to pump out a short story and prove to myself I could do it and submit it, right? But I did not do the work to believe in that story before I submitted it. So when I got those rejections, it was like devastating to the point of like, what am I doing if I can't even get a short story? And then why am I trying for a novel? I should just quit. It was like a really big spiral that I had to pull myself out of, right, for this short story. Contrast that last spring, I started to query my book. And when I started querying my novel, it was fraught with emotion. I'll be totally honest. I do not want to say that it wasn't. Yeah, the human part of me wanted validation, but I did a lot of mindset work before I started querying to believe in that book and to have multiple to envision and believe that multiple paths were possible for that book and that my story deserves to be in the world no matter what happened in the querying process. And that made it easier. Didn't make it easy, but it made it easier when I started to get rejections, because I did. I got a bunch of rejections before I finally signed with my agent. And so this is a success story. So you might be like, well, it worked out for you, but there were a lot of big rejections for agents that I really respected. But I was able to look at their rejections and go through we're going to walk you through a process of how you go through that moment of that gut punch. But kind of once I had gone through those moments, it was much easier for me to look at what they were saying and understand why they didn't see themselves as the best representation for my work. That had nothing. To do with the worth and value of my story and to kind of keep my belief in my story and myself as a writer and the future for my story outside of those rejections. And so all of that to say, doing that mindset work before you start to seek external validation is absolutely critical if you are querying feeling like if you don't get an acceptance, your book is useless and not worthy and should just be thrown in the trash and you should give up. You are not ready to query.
[28:52] Rachel: Yeah, well, you said a lot like believing in your book, and I also think believing in yourself because when you were querying in the first story that you told about your short story, you mentioned you were ready to give up, like, entirely not on that story, on writing, on writing on yourself. Whole passage, right? Like, give up writing that's a you thing, that's not that story. Like, you weren't thinking, oh, I'll table this short story and then I'll try another one. You were like, I'm ready to give up writing, and that's you. But in this case, you started talking about, well, you have to believe in your story, but you believed in yourself of like, okay, let's say that this book isn't picked up by an agent. One thing, I'll keep taking the book because I believe in the story. But number two, you weren't going to give up writing. You were just going to start a different story.
[29:41] Emily: Yes.
[29:41] Rachel: So you believed in both of those things, and you had done so much work in what you believed about yourself before you started query. Not just like, I believe in my story. And another thing, too, is I think because you believed in yourself, if you had decided to just stop querying the story and move on to another project that wasn't going to be a failure for you. We talked about this in an episode. When and why to table a project. It is episode 18. Yes, episode 18. We talked a lot about mindset in that episode because the decision to table your story doesn't mean you don't believe in it or that you don't believe in yourself. Like, there's all sorts of things wrapped up if you decide to move forward with a project for however long a period of time. But anyway, you had developed a really strong belief in yourself that no matter what happened during the querying process, it was not going to derail your life. You would be able to carry forward.
[30:48] Emily: Yes, but it's shocking how many people reach a point where they're like, I don't know what to do with my story anymore. It doesn't feel right. But if an agent validates it, then it's right. There are too many people who are querying from that space and I think publishing from that space, too, regardless of what publishing route you're going right before you put it in the hands of other people for rejection or review or whatever. You have to be solid with it, and you have to be solid with yourself or it's going to be a lot harder. Yeah, it's going to be a lot harder to ride these waves. And so it's worth it, Holly, to be asking this question, know, envisioning those futures so that you can do this mindset work alongside building your beautiful story to prepare yourself for that. I think it's beautiful that you're thinking about this right now.
[31:45] Rachel: Yeah. So let's talk about a support system. So no matter what type of difficult thing you're experiencing, whether that's feedback or a rejection or not getting selected for an award or a negative review, whatever it is, it is critical that you have a strong system around you. A support system of other writers, like your family support system is all well and good, but we also. Think it's so helpful to have a support system of other writers who get it, who get what it's like to do this, who get what it's like to pour your soul into 90,000 words and then look for someone else to validate them. You need that group of people that can listen for when you just need to vent, who can encourage for when you're feeling down, who can challenge you for when you're stuck in your head and you can't get out of it and who are on the same mindset journey that you are. So we're not just saying go find a group of writers and become best friends. Find the writers who are on the same page with you about what you believe. It is not helpful to go if you are on the anti hustle writing journey and you're like, I don't want to worry about these things. I'm trying to shift your mindset. But then you form a support group with people who are I'm going to call it toxic, but I'm releasing the juggle, but who are in a very toxic mindset space. You're not going to get the support you need from that person because they're in the midst of all the things you're trying to let go. So find the writer group of friends that are on the same path on the same journey, maybe not in the exact same place on the same path, but you're all working towards, okay, here's what we believe about ourselves. Here's what we believe about writing craft. Here's what we believe about our stories. Do we all feel good about this? Great. Can we challenge each other? Great. And where do you do that? Well, I'm going to tell you in tenacious Writing.
[33:58] Emily: Come join us.
[34:00] Rachel: You are so lost. I have no idea how to start farming that support group. That's exactly why we created our program, Tenacious Writing. That's why we have it. And in our program, all of us are on this path. So you have 50 plus writers who are together doing this with you, but we also form writing groups so you can have a smaller group to support you. We have feedback training to teach you everything you need to know about giving and receiving feedback. We have mindset like this is a community to be in. If you need a support system, like think it's.
[34:42] Emily: So what Rachel's talking about is having an anti hustle support system, right? A support system that's going to give you the unshaming anti hustle kind of support that you need. But I also think it's important that you find folks especially if you're looking for folks outside of Denise's writing, like in real life, to find folks who are also artists, because it's really I love my husband, but he does not put his soul into a piece of art that he then puts out into the world for criticism ever, let alone on a regular basis.
[35:24] Rachel: Right.
[35:25] Emily: So as supportive as he is of me. That is not a thing that I can respectfully ask him to understand and to support me through. You need to find people who are also putting themselves out there seeking support from someone who is not putting themselves out there in that way.
[35:49] Rachel: Right.
[35:49] Emily: Putting themselves and their souls out on display in this way is just setting yourself up to not receive the support that you need because that person doesn't understand. Right. I have high school friends who are actresses and I have high school friends who write music. And so those are friends of mine that are not writers that I can seek this kind of support from, because they understand what it's like to put their art out in the world in that way and to receive feedback and criticism and rejection and all those things from that. So I just want to add that piece and yes, you want anti hustle people, but you also want people who really understand what it is to be vulnerable through art.
[36:35] Rachel: Yeah. That doesn't mean that the support of your friends and family who don't get it isn't valuable. It's just not what we're totally is. It totally is. It's just not the same. Also need also get it.
[36:53] Emily: My husband can provide many different kinds of support.
[36:56] Rachel: He's very soul level.
[36:58] Emily: Understanding of what that vulnerability feels like is something that's just not as easy for him to understand.
[37:04] Rachel: Yes.
[37:06] Emily: Cool. Can we talk about awards and reviews that kind of like once your book is out there in the world.
[37:17] Rachel: How.
[37:17] Emily: Do we navigate that?
[37:19] Rachel: Yes. Okay, so like we've said before, it's inevitable that you will get both praise and criticism. It's inevitable that you're probably going to okay, I'll take this back. If you put out to get awards, if you're submitting for rewards, you're going to win some, you're going to lose some. It's not going to be everything is perfect all of the time.
[37:42] Emily: It relates to rejection.
[37:43] Rachel: Yes, it's very similar to the idea of rejection. And we were talking before we started recording how much we love Victoria Aviard's instagram posts about reviews are for readers, not for she. As a very successful writer, she talks about this a lot where reviews are not for writers. So if you're scrolling through your goods reads like doom scrolling because you're internalizing all of this negative feedback as like a critique on you as a person. That's not what it's for. So it's okay to be like, no, I'm not going to do that on goodreads. I'm not going to hyper focus on the reviews that my work is getting. I'm not going to hyper focus on these award results because that's not what they're for. The reviews are to help readers decide, do they want to pick up your book or do they not want to pick up your book? And then we just say, okay, I'm going to draw to me, I picture it like an opaque barrier. I know they're there. I'm not going to look at them.
[38:52] Emily: Go ahead.
[38:53] Rachel: I was just going to say then I can operate with, like, they exist outside of me. They exist outside of me. That's not like rejecting that I know that they exist or that I'm just saying I'm not going to go read them because I know that it's probably not going to make me very happy to go do that.
[39:13] Emily: Yeah. And I think our inner critic, like that little voice that is trying to protect us, wants to tell us that there's going to be something valuable in those reviews, right? That there's going to be something in that because we think of it as feedback. It's not feedback. A review is not feedback because you did not solicit it for specific purposes to make your work better.
[39:39] Rachel: Right.
[39:40] Emily: But our inner critic will whisper in the back of our head that if there might be common threads in all the bad reviews that we need to know about so that the next time we write a book, we're not going to fall into that trap, right, or that they might see something we didn't see. And we can take that into the future. Right. That little voice is trying to protect us by saying, how could you not read those reviews? Because there could be valuable information in there about how you could better belong and how you could be better validated and better exist in the world. And it's not true. That little voice is just scared. And so I think it can be terrifying to be like, wait, I'm not going to read a single bad review and just not know what people are saying about me. That's like asking to be ostracized, right, but that little belief that part of your brain that's very human and is trying to protect you, it's not right. In this circumstance, reading those bad reviews, it's not going to help you in any way, shape, or form. You don't have to read them, period.
[40:45] Rachel: You don't have to. I am definitely of the mind of like my brain is like, but I need to know. I need to know what people are saying. What am I doing in there? I'm searching for the validation so then I can be like, I already or the way to find it.
[41:02] Emily: And so you can then fix it, right?
[41:04] Rachel: So then I can say, like, okay, reviews, I don't need you because I'm going to go talk to my friends and have them tell me how good my book is or I'm going to remember how much blood, sweat and tears I put into this thing and how much I love it and kind of bring myself back to baseline.
[41:24] Emily: Yeah. So good.
[41:27] Rachel: Okay. On top of that, to build off that, we think it's really important to bring awareness to and begin to understand how you would react to one of those things how do you react to criticism? Does it make your heart pump? Does it make you want to withdraw? Does it make you question whether or not you're good enough? All of that is very helpful information to show you where you might need to spend some time doing mindset work and understanding. That's the preparing part. Once you understand like, oh, I know that criticism tends to make me overthink and spiral for a few days, then I can ask, okay, how do I best prepare for that? And one of those things may be I block goodreads. Don't look at goodreads. One of those things may be, I'm going to go schedule a zoom chat with my critique partner and just share with them some of the fears I'm having and have them talk me through it. Because you can start to draw your own boundaries with your own levels of comfortability and tap into your support network where you need it.
[42:43] Emily: Yeah. I think the point of understanding your instinctive reaction to criticism or rejection is not to make that not happen.
[42:58] Rachel: Right.
[42:58] Emily: We don't bring awareness to it, to be like, oh, I usually get really defensive, so I'm going to learn how to not be defensive.
[43:05] Rachel: Yes.
[43:07] Emily: The point is to understand that when something happens and you start to feel defensive, that, you know, this is my human instinctive reaction to whatever's going on. Which means I can't think clearly right now and I need to move through my steps that I know help take me out of this moment so I can reframe it and move forward in a productive way. And we'll walk you through that. But some of those steps and how you can start to think about that, but the first thing you need to know is how you respond to things. For me, I definitely start to overthink and spiral.
[43:39] Rachel: Yeah.
[43:41] Emily: Sometimes I get defensive, and usually I want to cry.
[43:46] Rachel: Yeah.
[43:46] Emily: I have a pretty quick tear reflex when it comes to criticism and rejection, not anything else. But if I'm on the verge of tears, it's usually because I'm feeling defensive or I feel like something is attacking me. And so I know that that is an instant signal that I need to walk away and start working through my process of working through my very human instinctive reaction. That's how it shows up for me.
[44:15] Rachel: Yeah. I tend to get really defensive, and I look for all the reasons why that could not be true. And then that makes me want to not physically fight somebody, but fight it. I want to prove them wrong. And that's not going to be very effective in any way in any of these things, especially not with reviews.
[44:39] Emily: But yours might be withdrawing.
[44:42] Rachel: Right.
[44:42] Emily: You might shut down. It could be flushing of your skin. It could be a desire to run away. Right. Whatever it is for you, knowing how to recognize that now will help you later. Be able to just better manage it when it happens. We can't prevent it from happening. Even if you block Goodreads, you could do a Google search, and Amazon sometimes shows what your goodreads number is, right? And so you could stumble across it. Or someone could send you a review that you didn't ask for or tag you on Instagram. Never tag an author in your review on Instagram. Don't do it. Just don't. Reviews are not for authors, they're for other readers. Just putting that out there. But it happens, right?
[45:34] Rachel: It happens a lot.
[45:34] Emily: Might tag you in a review on Instagram that's negative, and all of a sudden it is in your face and you didn't want it and you didn't ask for it, right? And so we have to be prepared for that to slip through the cracks sometimes, despite how much we've tried to protect ourselves and just accept whatever our human instinctive reaction is and not shame it. I'm not going to shame my tears.
[45:57] Rachel: No. And I think remembering that you as a person deserves grace all the time is really helpful and important in any of these scenarios because you're not going to shame your tears and you also deserve grace for having them. And you're not going to have a perfect reaction every single time. Some days you might be on your period, and then all of a sudden this back wrecks your world. But you need to take a step back because you're on your period. Or some days you might just be you didn't get a good night's sleep. Whatever it is, however you're having your reaction to something, give yourself grace. We still experience these same human reactions even though we do all this mindset work all the time. So we can allow ourselves the space to feel what we need to feel and then bring ourselves back to zero and bring ourselves back to, okay, give myself time to process this, and then what do I want to do about it? How do I feel? Do I want to do anything? Am I ready to let it go? Do I have to talk to somebody about it? What does it look like to work through what I'm feeling?
[47:07] Emily: So to recap, first thing, let yourself feel your feelings and start to identify what your feelings are, right? Because you have an instinctive reaction to these types of critical moments, whether they're attacks or just loving people giving you feedback that you just weren't ready for in that moment, right? Whatever it is, start to recognize and understand what your instinctive reaction is and don't shame it. That's step number one. So when these things slip through the cracks, though, and you find yourself in that moment, right? What are some things we can do to respond intentionally?
[47:52] Rachel: Intentionally. So the first thing is to not respond. Don't take like this is what I mean. If you're somehow tagged in like a negative review, don't go blasting that person and being like, you have no idea what it took, like, took to write this book. We want to take a pause. We take a breath. We take an awareness moment. We take a little second of, okay, that just happened, and we don't immediately jump into an action towards whatever it was that caused this reaction pause.
[48:35] Emily: So don't respond to the review. Don't respond to it at all, but definitely not in that moment.
[48:41] Rachel: Yes.
[48:41] Emily: And then this could be let's say you're in your very healthy critique group, right, with people that you absolutely love, and someone gives you criticism that is just way overwhelming to you. Sometimes this will happen to me when the criticism is, like, spot on, and I don't want to face it.
[48:57] Rachel: Right.
[48:57] Emily: And then I feel myself get that reaction.
[49:00] Rachel: Right.
[49:00] Emily: It feels like a major blow. And so I have learned to be like, okay, this is a moment where I have to stop talking about this, taking action, continuing to defend myself or defend why the criticism is not right or defend. Right. Defending is taking action. As soon as I start to notice that in my body, then the action stops.
[49:22] Rachel: Yeah.
[49:25] Emily: So then the second step is to remove yourself from the situation. Right. So shut your phone off. Tell your critique group, I just need to step back.
[49:34] Rachel: Right.
[49:36] Emily: The opposite of taking action is removing yourself from the ability to take action yes. To calm your nervous system down, because that's what's happening. You're having an instinctive human reaction to something. Your nervous system is like, Whoo. Holy crap. And so you need to calm it down. So common ways to do that. You can take a walk that's my go. To take a shower or a bath. You can do some yoga, watch a comfort movie. But remove yourself from the situation and try to calm yourself down.
[50:05] Rachel: Yeah. And sometimes this can take a few days. If you are an overthinker, like I am, and you continually circle back on whatever it was that caused this reaction in you, it might take a few days for it to chill out, for your brain to start to not let go in a bad way, but to like, okay, I'm processing this. And in that time, I am still going to be doing things to try and calm my nervous system, whatever that looks like for you next. I really like to find those people to talk it through. So whether that's you, Emily, or another writing buddy that I have, or my writing group, the people that I know who will understand and who will get it, I search those people out, and I ask them, Get me. Please help me with this. I need to talk to you about this. I'm really struggling with this. And at first, that felt really selfish of me to tell them, Please validate me, or Please help me work through this. I'm being ridiculous. I know I am, but I need to talk it through. Or can you please double check that I'm not reacting to this in an offhand way? So I will approach those people with that intentional, I need to talk this through. Can you listen? And they do. They listen nine times out of ten. Like me just venting about it. It helps me move on from it.
[51:43] Emily: Yeah. And it just helps reframe. I know that I was just talking about how sometimes if I get some feedback, that's overwhelming because it feels right and just would be a lot of work. Right. I got feedback from somebody that I loved that did that to me. So I went on a walk, and then I called you, and I was like, can you walk me through my reaction? Because I was like because sometimes it's like, am I overreacting? I don't know. And it was super helpful to talk through, like, okay, this is because it feels right and it's scary. But instead of getting defensive, it was like, I'm going to remove myself from the situation, walk it out, and then call someone else and talk to them and be like, give me some perspective on this. Because I'm in my body. Literally, I'm in my nervous system. And so that is a super valid thing to do.
[52:36] Rachel: Yeah. Once you're feeling a little bit more calm in your nervous system, we can start to reframe the thoughts. We can start to reframe what are the narratives going through our head. So at that point, that's where we try to stand really firm in our core beliefs. We try to remember why we're writing, why are we doing this? Why do we love our stories? Why are we showing up on The Daily and bring back? Because this is so important to me. Because I love these characters. Because the story has to get in the world. Because I can't wait for it to help the person that I used to be, however long ago. We bring those reasons back to us to encourage us and to help us feel more grounded. Then we remember who it is that we're writing for, that person that needs our story. US. I write for me. I love my ideal reader, right? But I write for me. It's fun. It makes me happy. It feels really good. So then I'm like, no, I don't want to give that up, or I don't want to compromise or sacrifice anything on that. I'm doing it for me because I love me, and I love doing it for me. And then remembering those core beliefs of, like, I am still worthy of anything outside of what someone thinks about my art, outside of this art conversation. I am still loved. I am still valuable. My existence still matters. All those really fundamental things we were talking about with solid mindset and recognizing that the need or the search for validation is normal, but also remembering that the only person who can validate me is me. So then I get to choose. All right, I'm going to validate me.
[54:27] Emily: Cool.
[54:27] Rachel: Yeah.
[54:29] Emily: And sometimes these steps can you can work through them. You get tagged in a review. You have a reaction to it. Go for a little walk, text, complain to your friend. Remember that you're not writing for whoever wrote that review. You're writing for a different ideal reader, and then you're through it. Sometimes it can take days.
[54:48] Rachel: Right.
[54:48] Emily: Like, I got a really hard rejection when I was querying, and it took me a whole day to calm my nervous system.
[54:55] Rachel: Right.
[54:55] Emily: And then it took me a couple of days of talking through it and journaling to reframe and reminding myself. It took a lot of extra energy to remind myself why I was doing this, who I was doing it for, and that I was still worthy. But because I had done a lot of that belief work ahead of time before I started querying, I was able to get there. And so don't shame yourself if it takes more than five minutes to work through these steps. It can take a while, and that's totally okay too. But recognizing where you kind of are in the process and what you can do, I think is really important.
[55:29] Rachel: Yeah. I think for me, a big thing of understanding the way my brain works was just knowing that it takes me time. Time is, like, a really big part of this process for me, where even if in that moment, I'm having some sort of reaction, and logically, I know that this is not the way that I want to be reacting to something, but I can't control the way that my body is reacting to it. I know I just need time. I need, like, a few days to work to get out of my head, and then I'll be totally okay. And it doesn't derail my beliefs in myself or my life. But time is so important to me, so I try not to put expectations around. Oh, well, I should know better by now. This should take me an hour, or this should take me, like, one sleep. Sleeping always helps. We have a phrase in our tenacious writing community. When you're feeling particularly overwhelmed, just go the fuck to sleep. You're going to be okay. Always works. Sometimes I need, like, two or three.
[56:38] Emily: Yeah. Holly, this question was amazing.
[56:40] Rachel: Yes. Thank you.
[56:42] Emily: Hopefully you got some really good stuff out of this. Even though our advice is not to grow a thick skin, don't feel like.
[56:50] Rachel: You need to grow your process to.
[56:52] Emily: Treat your thin skin with the love it deserves.
[56:55] Rachel: Yeah. Remove the idea of thick or thin skin. In general, there's just skin, and you're just human. You're just human. And the goal that I hear in your question is, how do I become comfortable with the uncomfortability of this world? And that's what this episode is about. So just learn to live in your skin.
[57:20] Emily: Yeah. A lot of this problem and love it. No matter how it reacts to things and what it does, it's protecting you. It's doing its animal thing to protect you from being ostracized.
[57:37] Rachel: Yes. All right, so don't forget, we have a couple of those links in our show notes for those other creatives that we mentioned to dive deeper into some of this work.
[57:50] Emily: Awesome. Thank you all so much. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[57:59] Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night. Link in the show notes.
[58:09] Emily: We'll see you there.
[58:11] Rachel: Thank you. Bye.
