A rock star is not some­one who takes the tem­per­a­ture, who gauges the mar­ket­place before he cre­ates his “art”. A rock star is some­one who needs to cre­ate and is will­ing to tol­er­ate the haters along with the fans. He’s some­one who incites con­tro­versy just by exist­ing… A rock star exists in his own unique space, and if you met him you prob­a­bly wouldn’t like him. Because he tends to be self-​focused to the point of being nar­cis­sis­tic. Because he cares. He needs to get his mes­sage out.

Seth’s Blog: Rock stars

Seth Godin is quot­ing from Bob Lef­setz here, and it struck me how much this applies to writ­ing, both blog­ging and fic­tion. For a long time I thought that if I was going my job right, there wouldn’t be haters, that neg­a­tiv­ity was an indi­ca­tion that I had failed to com­mu­ni­cate what seemed so clear to me. But this really isn’t true. Any time you’re speak­ing with a dis­tinc­tive voice, speak­ing with author­ity, some peo­ple are going to have issues. Those issues may boil down to noth­ing more than, “Well just who does he think he is, anyway?”

It’s impor­tant to have an answer to that ques­tion. You’re the writer, and it’s your pur­pose to get the word out. If that makes you a jerk, so be it. As Joe Straczyn­ski pointed out, there’s some­thing inher­ently arro­gant in the assump­tion that you’re going to make lit­tle black marks on tree pulp and expect other peo­ple to be so impressed as to pay money for them. So say what you mean, mean what you say and don’t apol­o­gize for any of it.

The first line there is also impor­tant, telling the sto­ries you mean to tell and not what you think the audi­ence wants to hear, but that’s a sub­ject for another post.