Writers Ask: I believe in myself. Why can’t others?

“My adventure in book-writing is new. I have a few people on my side who are excited—but then I have a few who don't believe I can do this or even want this. These are people who I know love me very much. I love them too. But it’s hard to tell someone about a dream only to have them shoot it down with negative words and actions. I believe in myself. Why can’t others?”

— Rachel

Dear Rachel,

Oh, my friend. This is a tale as old as time, which doesn’t make it feel any less crappy.

Yes, we love these people who don’t always believe in us. And these people love us, which is why they may not immediately support the Big Scary Thing of writing a book; because book writing is scary and the publication journey is scary and all of it is going to come with deep wounds, some in the form of public failure, and no one likes to fail in public. Even less people like to watch loved ones fail in public. The older we get, the more certain we become about this. But the thing about writing and seeking publication and telling others that you are writing and seeking publication (and honestly, all art pursuits) is that it requires the vulnerability needed to fail publicly, then get up and do it all over again.

The first time I remember embarrassing myself in public was in kindergarten, when our teacher asked us to run a skip race. I did not understand the physics of skipping. I was very shy and not at all athletic. Complicated body movements did not make sense to me, nor did the reasoning behind the skipping. Why are we all doing this, I wanted to ask the teacher. What’s the point again? I came from a very long line of German stock that believed the best thing you could do for fun was be productive. That makes for a tough psychic nut to crack once the nut has reached adulthood.

The teacher demonstrated the skipping a few times. The other kids made fools of themselves for a bit, then took off, gleefully hopping from foot to foot, while I hung back jumping around awkwardly by myself, until someone laughed at me, perhaps even the teacher, and I stopped the skipping foolishness until I could go home to learn how to skip in private. This, compounded with my seventh grade year when I explicably made the cheerleading team despite a complete lack of athletic ability, was when I first learned that it was far better to fail in private than it was to fail in public.

When I decided to go on my own book-writing adventure, I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it, not even my husband. It just seemed so dumb. Childish. A waste of time (cue the German sense of fun productivity.) The act of writing felt embarrassingly indulgent. Not to mention that the writing was terrible. No, like truly terrible. It was a first draft of a massive novel and I was wet behind the ears with no idea of what I was doing or how to do it other than to type and cringe on repeat. It felt like every day was a bit of a failure, and I wasn’t willing to fail in public with this one quite yet.

But you know how it goes: the more I typed, the less I cringed. The more I typed, the bigger the project grew. The more I typed, the more I learned about myself and my abilities as a writer. The more I typed, the more the project imprinted on me like one of those cute little geese in Fly Away Home. I was Anna Paquin and the pages were all my geese and together we soared and honked and became one big V of a book until maybe it was I who imprinted on the pages and they who were the ones leading me…. You get the idea.

The only problem with this was that it was still in private. Whether I had a good writing day or a bad writing day, it only mattered to me. All my failures were safe and private. But all my successes were also private, and there’s nothing more lonely than a well-earned celebration party with only one RSVP.

The book had become such a part of my life that keeping it secret felt more and more like living in secret each day. I finally got up the nerve to tell my husband about this adventure I’d been on and it turned out the only person who was embarrassed was me. 

But now, you’ve mentioned you’re past that point. You have thoroughly realized that this “book-writing adventure” is likely less a jaunty walk on the beach, and more of a real-deal, confess your undying love, “I’d like to spend my life with you” kind of relationship. This book is no fling—you’re in it with this book for the long haul.

And you did confess your love—you confessed your love for the book to the ones who supposedly love you back—and they did not reciprocate. At best, they tolerate the idea of you writing a book. Now let’s never talk about it again, they ask politely.

It sucks to love something so much, to have a thing that is so important to you, that others simply do not understand. Confessing that kind of love to someone who doesn’t get it deflates your hope balloon faster than an arrow to the center.

But that’s the thing—they don’t get it. Fundamentally. Either their dreams have clear-cut paths to success (see: doctors and lawyers and such), or they were deterred from going after the dream they really wanted (i.e., their mommas weren’t gonna let them grow up to be cowboys.) Or who knows, maybe they also come from a long line of German fun productive stock. Either way, now they see you, their sweet friend who they love dearly, headed for a potential public failure event. They remember what it was like to shit the bed a couple of times. Even worse, they know the warm embarrassment brought on by a public bed-shitting. It’s something mired deep in the marrow of everyone’s childhood bones, something we all learned when everyone laughed at us cause we couldn’t skip or we somehow made it on the cheerleading team despite the fact that we couldn’t touch our toes or jump—at all. That warm, oozy bed-shittiness they feel is shame.

When humans feel shame, we do one of two things—flight or fight. So when you tell someone you love who loves you back that you want to be a writer, and the idea of following an uncertain, creative pursuit triggers their shame button, they are either going to fly away (“Good for you! Let’s never talk about it again.”) or they will fight it (“Are you sure you can do this? Wouldn’t your time be better spent somewhere else?”)

Half the battle in following a creative pursuit is conquering your own shame over it. (See: secretly writing a book for a year until you finally burst into tears and scream to your unwitting husband that you LOVE this book and he’ll NEVER take it away from you.) The other half of the battle is in dodging other people’s shame responses to your pursuit. Some people will ignore what you’re doing until you find publication. Some people will try to tell you to get out while you still have your dignity intact (until, of course, you find publication in which case they may change tune and say they knew you when.) Others will just be flat out happy for you and what you’re doing. (These are the most well-adjusted people but BEWARE—they are dangerously jealous.)

Here’s the hard and fast truth— everyone has to start somewhere. Nobody is born with a book already written and a publishing contract to boot. Every successful author had to experience exactly what you’re experiencing right now. Oftentimes, the only thing standing between publishing and not publishing is just whether or not the author is ready to give up on their work. There are thousands of editors, thousands of agents, thousands of publishers and literal billions of readers that all come with their own subjective tastes. You just need to convince one person at a time, and often the most important person to convince is yourself. 

Simply put: it doesn’t matter how your loved ones choose to react to your writing. If your writing is important to you, then it’s important and it needs to be done. Some people will never understand it. Some people are literally scared of it because it’s an incredibly vulnerable thing to admit to having a creative dream. But e v e r y o n e has creative dreams. And only a few people are brave enough to pursue them. That kind of bravery can be terrifying and energizing.

And hey, if this stops being important and you want to hang it up, that’s fine too. It’s all about how you want to spend your time, and spending it on things that are important and make you happy. Life is short and stupid a lot of the time. So why not write a dang book? 

Onward,

Lisa

If you have a question you would like featured on Writers Ask, email me at lisa.k.bubert(at)gmail.com.)