How should you handle negative reviews of your work? People naturally care more about criticism—even if 90% of the comments are praise, we remember the 10% that isn’t. Utsudo suggests calming down first and recognizing that everyone’s perspective and experience differ. Harsh but constructive advice is worth understanding and absorbing; sour remarks meant only to belittle usually come from jealousy and needn’t weigh on you. Your worth shouldn’t be defined entirely by others.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

In psychology, gaining or losing the same thing affects us to different degrees: people care more about what they lose, and about negative criticism.

Put simply, if you open a review and the first 90% praises you, you’ll still focus on the 10% that criticizes. It stands out as if marked with yellow highlighter and red pen. Even if you pretend not to care, you can’t help rereading it, sinking into thought and wondering what you did wrong to be attacked like that.

In the internet age, negative feedback is unavoidable

In the internet age, everyone has a voice. A hundred people may have a hundred different viewpoints, so winning everyone’s approval is extremely difficult. Yet people care more about negative voices and often get stuck in them.

Criticism can appear at any time—gossip in daily life, or negative responses after you release your work or ideas online. What mindset should you face it with?

When facing negative reviews, calm down and reflect first

First, as I said at the start, don’t rush to blame yourself or others. Understand that everyone’s views and positions differ, as do their life experiences. Something perfectly ordinary to some people may seem unbelievable to others.

When emotions run high, not everyone can stay objective. But if you can calm down and reflect, you might discover directions or perspectives you’d never considered—which is very valuable advice.

In other words, apart from pure trash comments that attack for the sake of attacking, some advice may sting, but if you try to understand it, you may gain something unexpected.

Sour remarks usually come from jealousy

As for bitter, unconstructive, emotional remarks—they’ll certainly hurt when you see them. But understand that people who try to belittle others are very likely driven by jealousy.

Because they can’t do it themselves, or don’t want to put in the effort, they hide their insecurity by desperately belittling those who have achieved more, to feel better for a moment. But that’s just escapism.

People with this mindset will never accomplish anything. Whenever something happens they just complain about their bad luck, never seeing how much others paid for their success. They act as if others’ success were a moment of luck and try every trick to drag them down.

If you have time to stir up trouble, why not spend that energy and time on your own work?

I really dislike people who dream of instant success, or who dismiss every possibility before they’ve even started, complaining about everything while never reflecting on how much they’ve actually done.

Your worth shouldn’t be defined by others

Whatever others think, every issue will always have people for and against it. And the world is full of gray areas. Learning to accept and understand with a broader mind is a very important lesson—in life and in your work.

You don’t work hard for anyone’s applause, and others’ cold words shouldn’t make you back down. Nobody is perfect; even experts make mistakes. Accept things calmly, learn humbly, and keep being yourself—that’s the right answer.

Your worth shouldn’t be defined entirely by others, especially by those who deliberately belittle you.

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Further reading

• Previous: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #116: Let’s Talk About Reprints
• Start from the beginning: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #01: Utsudo’s Debut — A Road to the Dream Covered in Frost
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.