Podcast: Write Your Own One-Star Review and Turn Your Writing Fears Into Fuel
With anne hawley & Rachelle Ramirez
Fear of negative reviews holding back your writing? Join authors Anne Hawley and Rachelle Ramirez as they share a powerful exercise to overcome the paralysis of potential criticism. Learn how to write your own "worst review" and transform it into motivation to keep writing.
You’ll discover
How to face your deepest writing fears head-on
Why negative reviews can actually help identify your ideal readers
A practical technique to reframe criticism into creative fuel
Whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction, this episode offers actionable strategies to push past review anxiety and write with confidence. Perfect for writers at any stage who struggle with imposter syndrome or fear of criticism.
Subscribe for weekly writing insights at https://pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
transcript
Anne Hawley: Hey, writers, has fear of a terrible review ever stopped you from continuing with your writing project? Well, this one's for you.
Rachelle and I discuss an exercise that will help you blow that fear right out of the water.
Hi, Rachelle.
Rachelle Ramirez: Hey, how are you?
Anne Hawley: I'm good. How are you?
Rachelle Ramirez: Alright.
Anne Hawley: I thought it would be fun today on the Write Anyway Podcast to talk about one of most writers' greatest fears, which is they're gonna put something out into the world and somebody's gonna hate it.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah, very common. Very common, but.
Anne Hawley: I know. I've had that fear. One of the methods that I came up with some time ago, and it seems to have been helpful for people, is the exercise of imagining the worst possible review that you could get. Imagine your own worst one star review that somebody puts on, let's say Amazon. And I know you've worked with it too. What's been your experience with the idea of it?
Rachelle Ramirez: I found this exercise that you introduced to me, I'm gonna say maybe five years ago, incredibly helpful. So, I used it in my ADHD writer's course. People loved it. And they said that it was really helpful. And I ask my clients, my editing clients to do this review whenever I hear things like, " i'm worried about what other people are gonna say. I'm worried about people thinking that this is a bad book. I'm worried that I'm gonna be considered, you know, who does she think she is?" That kind of stuff.
I asked them to do this one star review. So you asked me to do my one star review many years ago, and I have come up with another, because I'm working on something different now.
I keep hearing myself repeat in my head that I have to stop and counter and I don't know you wanna hear it?
Anne Hawley: Absolutely. Got a couple in my mind too.
Rachelle Ramirez: "Uninspired, unoriginal, hack. She's a bitch."
Anne Hawley: Ooh! "Uninspired" and "she's a bitch" are two really different reviews.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. Also, "wasted my money."
Anne Hawley: Would it help to go deeper into what that terrible, terrible person is thinking of your work? "Wasted my money " implies I was expecting something else.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. I am deeply worried that people will think that I'm taking advantage of them in some way.
Anne Hawley: Oh, interesting.
Rachelle Ramirez: I think those are all sort of tied together. "Uninspired, unoriginal, hack," that would be like taking other people's work, taking advantage of other people. " She's a bitch," well, of course that's what you do if you're gonna steal other people's work.
And "wasted my money." It would be the same thing. "I could have gotten this information anywhere. So this author has basically taken advantage of me in some way."
Anne Hawley: Gotcha. So this is in specific reference to a work of nonfiction.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yes.
Anne Hawley: A guidebook for people, something where you are offering help, instruction, self-help, that sort of thing. And fear underlying this one star review is am not gonna deliver the goods.
Rachelle Ramirez: Something that somebody else hasn't already said a hundred times and they've picked up. I really want what I write to be something concise and valuable.
Anne Hawley: And yet the one star review that you just gave or the couple of different ones seems to imply a fear, not that I'm not valuable, but that I'm not scintillatingly original, that no one has ever said this before, and that's the only possible way anyone would spend money buying my book. And of course we realize that there's no such thing as absolute originality.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. And then, you know, that's one of the things about writing nonfiction and these self-improvement type range of stuff is the idea that, oh, I'm trying to counter in many ways all of this advice: "you should, you should, you should." And then here I am with my version of, well, "you should counter this advice."
I struggle with that a lot and I have to stop myself and redirect my thinking. And each time those thoughts come up, I have to address 'em.
Anne Hawley: When you counter that, the other half of the exercise was then go and write your most genuine five star review that specifically is in opposition to that terrible one star review.
Rachelle Ramirez: So I said "fresh inspired work from an author with the heart of a teacher. This is the book I've been waiting for. It helped me so much."
Anne Hawley: Now none of that actually says this is scintillatingly original and worth every penny. You're not countering the bad review word for word. You're countering it with a different person. The five Star review would be from an actual person who would get from your book what you intended them to get. The one star review is basically from somebody who isn't in your audience and shouldn't have read the book in the first place, and probably wouldn't read the book in the first place.
Rachelle Ramirez: So I tried to counter "Uninspired, unoriginal hack" with "fresh inspired work," and then countered "bitch" with "an author with the heart of a teacher," and then the "Wasted My Money" I was countering it with, "this is the book I've been waiting for. It helped me so much."
Anne Hawley: Yeah, there you go. In identifying that other voice, the five star voice, it seems like you are honing in on your ideal reader.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. This is the person I wrote the book for. Oh my gosh. It touched them. It hit the mark. It resonated with them, and it was worth writing, beyond the fact of just my own, I'm writing for my enjoyment. I'm writing because that's part of my process in the world, I've actually touched someone else with this thing that is so important to me.
Anne Hawley: And that frees you then to keep working on the book?
Rachelle Ramirez: Not always, but this is what I use to counter that, and many times it does, or it cues me into, okay, well if that is what I'm doing and it is possible to get to that review. I believe that, from someone, you know, even if it's my favorite auntie, you know, I don't know.
But they, it is possible to get that review, so let me write this book for that person as inspired as I can be, as close to who I am as I can be, so that when that five star review comes in, that resonates with me as well. Yeah, I did the best I could. That's what it was meant to be.
It also reminds me that, if I'm working on myself, the quality of my work, the intent of my work, I'm actually less worried about what other people think. I don't need as much to even know what they think. And if they don't, it's the great thing about this exercise is that it reminds me that my book isn't for everyone. There will be people who dislike it, but there will be some people who love it. And that's what I'm working for, is not to make this book for everyone, but for that one ideal reader you mentioned.
Anne Hawley: My story of this actually originates with something you told me.
Rachelle Ramirez: Oh, oh.
Anne Hawley: it was years ago. I was at a book festival, and I had my novel, Restraint, out on the table. It has a fairly provocative cover. And the table next to me was occupied by a pair of writers, middle-aged woman and her elderly mother, who had written a series of middle grade books, for young readers. And so I'd struck up a conversation with the daughter and she said, well, what have you written? And I sort of showed her my book and she looked a little prim and a little bit later the mother wandered over to my table and she picked up my book and started leafing through it.
And her daughter was like, "Mom! Put that book down. That book is not for you." And I texted you, Rachelle, about that, and you texted me back and said, use that in your advertising, that's your best review. "This is not your mother's book." And that was a great experience for me. 'cause my immediate reaction was, well, I want everybody to love my book.
It's in this case, a piece of historical fiction, a queer love story. It had elements that clearly are not for everyone and I really took that to heart and made great efforts to pitch and aim my book, at the right people and not try to aim it at everybody.
Since then I've been working on another historical piece of fiction. And if I had to say what's stopping me from writing it, some of it is the readers of that first book are gonna be disappointed in the second one. 'cause it's a very different book. It's set in the same historical period, but it's otherwise very, very different.
So my worst one star review is, "I only read in this period to read about beautiful upper class people and their beautiful costumes. And why would I want to read about these dirty, filthy servants, these uneducated, illiterate--"
i'm really having a hard time imagining somebody feeling that way about it, but this is a regency era story, and my reader of that sub-genre likes the upper class interactions and the fancy language. And so to be confronted with a set of characters whose English isn't that good, one of them is illiterate, they work very hard for a living, they probably are missing some teeth by this time in life. You know, that sort of thing. And it is a very different appeal.
So when I think about someone saying, "Ew, this was not what I wanted," part of me says, well, make sure the book cover at least tells them what they're getting. But the counter review to that is "I was so sick of the regency genre where it's all upper class people with no concerns. And it was wonderful to read about love and relationship and friendship and found family among people who had no advantages in the world.
That would be the counter review to that.
Rachelle Ramirez: By writing that counter review, does that help you? Do you use it to stop the one star review in your head?
Anne Hawley: Yeah, it does. It makes me realize that however much these two books might sit side by side on a shelf, I really am not writing this second book for the same audience as the first book. Although it does help me realize that a lot of the audience for the first book might have made the same sort of moral and ethical leap out of that period and be more interested in a broader picture of people in that time than was traditionally presented by authors like Georgette Heyer, for example.
So, yeah, it does help me think, not only is it a completely different audience, but it might be some of the same people who are now completely different because of education and learning and awareness that they've come to over the years, just as I have, which is why I'm writing about a different class of people.
Rachelle Ramirez: Do you spend time-- do one star reviews enter your head a lot? Do you have intrusive thoughts with that when you're writing or you sit down to write?
Anne Hawley: Not especially when I'm writing, but one star reviews interest me greatly in reality. I always look at the one star reviews on a book that I'm thinking of buying because it usually tells me that somebody who so adamantly hated a book enough to give it a one star review, either they're like me or they're not like me. They're diametrically opposed to me. So for example, someone says," there's just too much woke shit in this book," chances are I'll probably like it. So that can be very helpful too. And my book has too much woke shit in it.
Rachelle Ramirez: And have you used this one star review exercise with your clients and editing clients?
Anne Hawley: I use it in the HEA club. I have recommended it and I have had people tell me that they have found it relieving, and part of the fun of it is you can make the bad review really funny. You can just go all in. It's fun to say it like, I didn't like this, but y and, and really get into the kind of snotty, nasty voice with it, and it has that humorous effect of taking all the wind out of that kind of thing.
So it's very useful exercise. I recommend it.
Rachelle Ramirez: Well, I hope this helps somebody who's listening as well.
Anne Hawley: I hope so too. And I would love to hear from people if they write their own bad, terrible one star reviews. I'd love to see some samples.
Rachelle Ramirez: Yeah. Put it in the comments.
Anne Hawley: Yeah, put in the comments, let us know. Well, thanks Rachelle. This was fun.
Rachelle Ramirez: All right. Thank
Anne Hawley: See you next time.
Rachelle Ramirez: All right. Bye.
Anne Hawley: If you would like to get a weekly dose of writing insight and mindset and marketing tips in your inbox, subscribe to the Write Anyway Newsletter at pagesandplatforms.com/subscribe.
And that's it for this episode of the Write Anyway Podcast. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.