Over several years of blogging, I’ve received some interesting letters from people. And by interesting I mean rude.
These are not written to offer friendly constructive criticism or to politely disagree with me. They’re written to get a reaction, but I usually have neither the time nor inclination to give these people what they want.
The following letter, for example, arrived in my inbox last week. “Dan” decided he needed to give me a piece of his mind—with a fake reply address, of course, so I couldn’t respond even if I wanted to (emphasis mine):
Reading your article titled “What Should I Write About? Finding Inspiration” was a waste of my time. It did not answer the questions it was intended to. You acted as if you were answering the first question while just talking about your vacation, and you didn’t even attempt to answer the second question you identified. I haven’t ever read any of your other articles, but based on this one, I wouldn’t want to. The only information on that page which is relevant to the topic is your statement, “getting outside can be inspiring”. While relevant, that statement is not helpful. You don’t say anything about what thought processes lead to inspiration or good ideas, or about what makes an idea good. This thoughtless blither should not have been on Google’s first page for any search criteria.
Well, “Dan,” I did actually answer both questions. If you had read to the end of the post, you would’ve seen that I had planned a follow-up post for the following week.
- Post 1: What Should I Write About? Finding Inspiration
- Post 2: What Should I Write About? Focusing Your Ideas
I’m sorry you feel my writing is “thoughtless blither,” but I really have no control over being on Google’s first page for search criteria.
What surprises me most is that you bothered wasting even more of your time writing to me, when you could’ve spent that time searching for a better article.
Any other bloggers out there have some good hate mail stories to share?