Publication Shame is my Boogeyman
I am awash in emotions when I’m writing. There’s that giddiness when I’m starting a project and the words just tumble out of me. There are the slower, more reflective stages of revision when I tease solid ideas out of the jumble. I get a kick out of solving plot problems. I get frustrated with phrases that refuse to clarify their meaning. I feel awe and sorrow and curiosity. But shame waits until the end to show his face.
It’s like he’s been biding his time under the bed, listening to me chatter to myself about my little stories, with this sinister smile on his face because he knows what’s coming. I’ve been talking all along about how I want to put my stories out there for other people to read. And at last, it’s happened! My writing has been accepted for publication! That’s his cue. My lurking shame monster springs out from under the bed and grabs me by the throat.
I’m a terrible writer, and now people will know it. I was arrogant to think my writing deserved an audience. My sentences are bad. My thoughts are bad. Why am I showing people this? I should hide! I should make my words disappear!
These feelings come on strong and suddenly, but they are also (as this moving Lit Hub article by Jennifer Huang demonstrates) totally normal. For a lot of writers, having their words published is both their greatest goal and their greatest fear. As soon as we are given the opportunity to share our work, we begin to rehearse imaginary narratives in which we are reviled by critics and readers alike. Aware of the injustices in publishing, we wonder how we could possibly deserve the spot we have when other voices go unheard. We are mired in self-doubt and anxiety, unable to lift our legs and move forward. I know that I’m not alone in these feelings, but my boogeyman (bless his heart) tries to make me feel special. I’m different, you see. Because while everyone else is self-deluded, I’m right. They’re needlessly afraid of being what I actually am: a fraud, a hack, an imposter.
I try to listen to the things that my husband and my loving writer friends say to me (things that my more rational self says to me, too):
You aren’t writing to please everyone. Heck, the whole point of my forthcoming book, Millions of Suns, is that we need a multitude of approaches to writing. I try to think of that one reader out there who has been longing for someone to say what I’m saying in the weird way I say it. I write for you, my fellow quirkster.
Someone already believes in your writing. If my writing was as terrible as I fear it is (i.e., utterly unintelligible), it never would have gotten to the point of publication. I know that the publishing world is in no way the sole arbiter of good writing, but having a publishing contract does provide indisputable evidence that at least one other person responded to my writing enough to want to share it.
This isn’t your book anymore. If I were to write my books again today, they would be totally different. Everything I have ever written, published or not, was written by a former version of me. I need to honor her voice. Celebrate her voice. It’s what I do for my students and friends, right? Shouldn’t I do it for the writer I used to be?
There is more work to do. As writer Liz Asch put it in that lovely Lit Hub article, “While the book is a fixed thing, I am not.” I can’t expect one piece of writing to represent all of what I am or will be. I am a writer, but I am not my writing. My creations fall from me like autumn leaves. Some are pressed and ironed and kept, and some decompose into soil. But I keep growing.
Along these lines, the one piece of wisdom that has done more than any other to calm me down is something I came across on Twitter from the author Steve Edwards:
Your writing will change the world. I don't mean the words, most of which will gather dust or get thrown away. I mean the discipline of putting sentences on the page, what that does to the heart & mind with which you meet your life.
— Steve Edwards (@The_Big_Quiet) June 3, 2023
I need to paint this on the wall behind my computer. This beautiful and simple statement pulls the rug out from under my shame monster and sends him sprawling, because it changes the rules. Who cares if no one else loves my words? Who cares if anyone even sees them? That was never the only reason to write.
This world needs people with the capacity to reflect on themselves and allow their ideas to grow and fade and reform. The success of writing is not external. Even published, my words do their work only when they cross the threshold into someone else’s mind and invite them to contemplate the world anew. I offer my writing not as a product but as a gift among many gifts, any of which could be taken up or left behind. Regardless of whether my words have a life beyond me, they had a life in me. And as I am a person in this world, that matters.
It matters for you, too. Whatever it is that you’re doing—whether you’re making art or pancakes—I hope that you “meet your life” with a heart trained up on the work of reflection, determination, and creation. I hope that when the boogeyman of shame creeps out from under your bed, you are ready to duck his attack. You don’t have time for him. You have places to go, people to be.
