The Story of My First Bad Review

 With creative work, opinions of all kinds are fair game when you release some form of art. I’ve released two poetry chapbooks and one short story collection so far. What will 2025 bring? Not sure! But but I’ve gotten the full spectrum of opinions on my work. All the way from making the person actually cry, to a thumb’s up, to some negative reviews, but mostly, “Oh, I haven’t read it.” But hey, getting paid is getting paid. 

When you get negative criticism, you just have to take it on the chin. Not everyone has the same tastes as you and that’s just a fact. No matter how well you’ve done something there’ll be at least one person who doesn’t like it. It happens and I understand as a consumer if you don’t like something you don’t have to like it. My favorite example of this is when Massive Denial plays a show that’s general not our people and as we get into the second song of the set, a good portion of people would leave. “I get it, I understand. No hard feelings,” I’d think to myself. It comes with the territory. 

So, I would also get some negative feedback on my work. Too much atmosphere. Too little going on. Too sad. Meh. It’s all good to hear so that I can improve my craft. Even with the bad stuff, I’d get complimented on how much heart it would have. I’ll take that. It’s better to save the emotional foundation set and the rest be undercooked because if a work doesn’t have its emotional foundation, then what’s the point of the work? It gives you the opportunity to improve your skills and make you a better artist so it should be welcomed! 

I thought I’d recall the tale of getting my first negative piece of feedback as a published writer because it’s so distinct and far above than just not liking what I wrote. It was certainly… something… 

In June, 2022, I released my first chapbook, ISOLATIONIST (Where you can read in full here! https://wagnerswriting.blogspot.com/2022/06/isolationist-full-digital-copy.html ). Quite a few of my friends bought a copy. I appreciated it a lot as I didn’t know how it was going to go. It was the first week and I was running around, making deliveries, and printing copies and copies of books. Then an ex-coworker, let’s call her K, asked to buy one too. Fair enough, so I gave her one and went on my way. 

I didn’t notice at the time, but K hadn’t spoke to me for a week after that. I was too busy at the time doing other things. Then she stopped me. “Hey… I read your book.” Oh, how’d you like it? “I couldn’t look at you… I thought you were evil.” 

The fuck? 

The thing about K is that she’s religious in the worst way. Only a man and a woman can get married. Religion and prayer should be in every school (only if it’s Christianity.) And this calloused view of ‘if something bad happens to you, that’s God punishing you for all the bad you’ve done.’ I’ve had a conversation with K about how me being Type 1 diabetic is because “I listened to heavy metal and I’m a negative person.” What an asshole, right? And what sense does that make? Many people listen to metal and are not sick. Many diabetics don’t listen to metal, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. Without a reason. 

I just assumed she was/is stupid and I never argued even though I thought she was wrong. We’re in a finite space and if we argued, we wouldn’t be friends, and it’d make work awkward. So I kept my opinions to myself. Religion can be a useful tool, just don’t weaponize it and be an asshole. 

Evil? “Yeah, You’re just depressed and negative and saw you as evil.” Granted, my book is a bit of a bummer, but to mark me off as evil? That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? She said she got over it, whatever that meant and I just had to sit with that information. Was that negative criticism? Not sure what the fuck that was. 

That was really the cracks beginning to show in her and I’s friendship. It was just this spiritual superiority of “Why do good if you won’t get into Heaven? If God wasn’t real, what stops us from doing bad things?” She actually said that. She wasn’t a philosopher, nor a kind person. She was nice, but not kind. It wasn’t long after that I just began ignoring her because she wasn’t worth tolerating. There plenty of horror stories from her, but I’ll just work myself up. 

Dealing with people like that can be confusing, but you just have to keep on rolling. A simple “I didn’t like it,” would’ve sufficed though. At least I got an interesting story to go with it. So pick up a copy of Isolationist, it’s evil and extremist Christian disapproved!

Now I’m working on shit that’s way more evil than Isolationist. Hope K reads that one and really clutches her pearls!