Turn Off the Comments

David McEachan | Pexels

I turned off comments on Reddit today. Not because I can't take criticism, I've had plenty of it and most of it was fair. I turned them off because I noticed I was wasting my time writing for the comment section when there was so much else to be done.

The moment that pushed me over was small and stupid, the way these moments usually are. Someone on Reddit said that I was a terrible writer. He suggested I should stop writing, and he looked forward to the critics having a field day with my work. Just to be clear, my debut book is only available for purchase on September 30.

What got me wasn't the comment itself. It was what I did with the next hour. I opened a reply and deleted it. Opened another and deleted that one too. Checked back twice to see if anyone had piled on. By the time I closed the tab, the actual work I'd meant to do that night hadn't been touched.

That's the bit nobody tells you before you put a book out there. It isn't the bad comment that costs you, it's the account you keep checking afterward, the little rehearsal in your head where you win the argument nobody asked you to have.

So I turned the comments off. On the site, that was easy, one click and it's done. In my own head it's taken longer, and I'm still not finished with it. I still catch myself drafting replies to people who were never going to read a full sentence I wrote, let alone a whole book. The habit doesn't go away just because the comment box does.

What helps sometimes, is remembering that I don't owe every stranger's opinion a hearing just because they typed it where I could see it. A reader who finishes the book and disagrees with me, I'll sit with that all day. A single bully scoring points on a single thread in a vast universe of conversations doesn't get a vote in how I feel about my own work.

If I'm honest, I am still thinking about that comment. But I don't feel compelled to answer it anymore, not out loud and not in my head either. The comments are off.