This Essay is Totally Selfish
But it might help, if you’re a writer
I’m writing this essay as a prophylactic.
I’ve faced plenty of criticism about things I’ve written over the years. Example: murder trial coverage for a newspaper I worked at more than a decade ago.
After the story printed, I came into the office to find voicemails left by man cussing me sideways. He couldn’t get all his growling done before the beep, so — of course — he kept calling back to finish his yackety-yap.
I can’t remember if I was threatened in those calls, but I do remember having to replace the windshield on my car that month. I chalked it up to coincidence, of course, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t wonder if maybe….
Words are powerful tools for writers, and that’s why what we write impacts our readers. It’s also why writers need tough skin, so to speak.
Even though I’ve faced criticism for my work in the past, I haven’t really received much blow-back on my personal writings. That’s going to change, I’m sure, as I continue to publish, and that’s why I’m writing this essay.
These are my Band Aids
Yup. That’s right. And I’m gonna use every last one of them.
Whenever someone throws darts at my writing and nicks me, I’m gonna slap one or more of these suckers on there so I can get over it and move on with my day.
Shoot. I might even carry a few of them around in my pocket so I don’t have to dig around for them.
Feel free to grab a few if you’re a writer who has sensitive skin or is prone to stumbling.
Is it just me, or is it hot in here?
You’re just dinnertime fodder. Don’t sweat it. The people that matter know who you are.
— Halle Berry, 2021 interview with CBS Sunday Morning
It’s not about them
Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
— Barbara Kingsolver
Trust yourself
Learn to trust our own judgement, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad — including your own bad.
— Doris Lessing
Don’t bend
Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
— Franz Kafka
What do you want to write?
So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.
— Virginia Woolf
Why?
It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
— Virginia Woolf
Sleep on it
Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic. Write those letters to the editor in your head but don’t put them on paper.
— Truman Capote
Don’t let it change what you need to write
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
— Saul Bellow
Stick a fork in it
When it’s finally in print, you’re delivered — you don’t ever have to look at it again. It’s too late to worry about its failings. I’ll have to apply any lessons this book has taught me toward writing the next one.
— Eudora Welty
No one really masters this
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
— Ernest Hemingway
Yup. One day, I will say, ‘Oops’
Early publication can be a dubious blessing: we all know writers who would give anything not to have published their first book, and go about trying to buy up all existing copies!
— Joyce Carol Oates
Everyone is a critic
I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.”
— Stephen King
Steadfast. Sturdy. Stubborn.
It’s impossible to discourage the real writers — they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.
— Sinclair Lewis
If it buzzes…
Reduce intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself and listen to it.
— Richard Brautigan
Why do you write?
Writers are not here to conform. We are here to challenge. We’re not here to be comfortable — we’re here, really, to shake things up. That’s our job.
— Jeanette Winterson
Nope. I’m not smarter than they are
Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
— Rod Serling
Grab a mirror.
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
— Joseph Chilton Pearce
Don’t sweat the small stuff
You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.
— Margaret Atwood
Who will remember me after I’m gone?
The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go on as if you had never arrived.
— Ann Patchett
I am!
I exist as I am. That is enough.
— Walt Whitman
Focus on the real goal
We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.
— Galileo Galilei
Courage does not mean you are not afraid. It’s about what you do despite the fear.
Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?
— Elizabeth Gilbert
The best things in life can never be taken
One’s dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.
— Michael J. Fox
Listen first
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.
— Dali Lama
Be grateful. Didn’t you learn something amazing today?
Build pockets of stillness in your life.
— Maria Popova
Put on your boots
The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how high you raise your foot.
— Benny Lewis
Be willing to be split open
Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
— Natalie Goldberg
Meow
Say yes to wanting to be this cat.
Jack Ridl, from his poem, After Spending the Morning Baking Bread
