Writers, Please Talk Your Shit

You didn't just "write a thing," you bled out a bit of your soul for something. DIDN'T YOU?

I went to AWP - the Authors and Writers Conference - for the first time this year after years of studiously avoiding it. I am an introvert and grew up in literary circles in NYC, so going out of my way to meet people who often want parasocial gossip on my real-life friends or exes has always seemed strange. I stopped hanging out with exclusively writers many years ago and it made my life infinitely less competitive; you shouldn’t really sleep with people who want to wear your skin, you know what I mean? I don’t mean the queer fuck-you-or-be-you tension; there is the tension where someone you went on a few dates with now wants the email to an editor you once worked with, or an internship with a friend. Some people call this networking.

arabellesicardi

A post shared by @arabellesicardi

Intentionally entering a space where everyone either is in an MFA program or, to be frank, even knows what that is, was mostly because it was in my city this year. I had a lot of fun seeing friends from all around and listening to brilliant writers talk at length about genre, queerness, disability, careerism, et cetera. No regrets and everyone was lovely, truly. But after making the acquaintance of all kinds of different writers across genre, age, career scope - best-selling authors and people who have never published anything in the public eye - I really need to hold your hands and say this: stop being so self-deprecating about writing and creativity. Stop that right now.

I met so many writers who as soon as I asked what they’re writing shrink into themselves, in an apology before they even said a thing. People selling their own books at booths who could pitch effortlessly the books of total strangers and forgot to mention their own book, right in front of them, books that may have taken them years to write and think. Some of these people were five books in, some of them were best-selling novelists, some of them were in MFA programs, maybe some of them were too afraid of rejection to consider themselves writers at all. It didn’t matter. Everyone did the in-person version of “I did a thing” and the “thing” they did was the crux of their career, perhaps the baring of their soul in memoir form, a life’s work condensed into 230 pages, neatly bound. And to all of these people I say: own your shit, and learn to do so expeditiously.

Marie Howe

Maybe it is because I have lived in Los Angeles now and everyone is “working on something,” from the Uber drivers (out of work TV writers, often with more professional experience in big productions than me) to the baristas to the hairstylists to the influencers to the corporate baddies. People talk a lot of shit about the vacuous nature of LA people, mostly about their inauthenticity, but at least people here have practiced confidence in what they’re selling - whether that is simply an overpriced matcha or their pilot or an influencer deal or the pitch deck for their start-up beverage company. The scammers and the “real” artists here - they know how to sell you things. No one will ever listen to you if you are afraid even of listening to yourself.

I don’t mean to equate your writing purely to a transactional sale; no money may ever be exchanged. But there is an intellectual and spiritual value to simply being committed to the work. When you cannot say out loud, without tweaking, that you are writing [insert an explanation of your work here], your lack of confidence tells me you are not at home in the work you are doing. And it is a mind palace you created for yourself, yes? You can’t be home in an extension of yourself? When I’m asking what you’re working on, I am not asking what makes you money, but rather what passions you have that you’re chasing, and documenting, and writing about. Are you shrinking from the things you love most in the world? What is keeping you up at night? Are you afraid to admit you care about stuff? That seems sad. Why is that?

Me asking you what you’re writing should not make you feel embarrassed or strange. If it does, I need you to examine the trained and instinctual responses in yourself that are happening here - and address them. At literary events, like AWP, you are self selecting into a place where you shouldn’t have to defend the fact you are a writer, and it seems pretty obvious that you are dedicating a part of yourself to a story. If you are qualifying it, shirking that title, if you are afraid of claiming your space, how on earth will you defend the story when it leaves you? [And really - isn’t the point of writing to exorcize something out of your system? To finally be free of it?? Otherwise you’re held hostage by the muse and your own expectations.]

I do not have imposter syndrome so maybe my bewilderment at The Writer’s Self-Deprecation is completely unrelatable. You are welcome to find this irritating; I’m being 100% serious. I have been a writer my entire life; I would write and have written for no money, for nobody but myself, and I have grown up my entire adult life as a paid writer for one publication or another, being edited by great editors and terrible ones. I would be a writer without any bylines but my journals in my closet; I will be a writer after everyone forgets my name and any books I’ve written become doorstops in someone’s attic.

I recognize the argument of, Oh, it’s easy to say that, having these things, what if you didn’t? But the thing is, it would still be true. I knew I was a writer as a little kid because I would write draft after draft of suicide letters, searching for the perfect way to be remembered after death. I had nothing of value then but my life and its potential. I didn’t want to live, but I wanted to write. Writing is part of how I stay alive, so much like oxygen. I have written essays on my phone on the train, I have written on napkins, recorded voice notes on dog walks, written on my arm if I had to. No one ever makes you write outside of school - it’s a self declaration. Every time you show up to write, when you write anything, you declare it again. And you did that already, right? You committed to at least that. So why hide from it? You’re a writer.

If you write because the words bully you into putting them on the page, if you write because characters in worlds not yet lived are shouting at you to record their stories - you are a writer. It is immaterial if you get a fancy book deal or an MFA. Plenty of writers get industry recognition late in life, some never publish. Everyone’s paths are different.

Please be less afraid of being earnest. It is a waste of time and heart and energy, and we are only given so much of these things to begin with. What would your life and your writing practice and your career (in THAT ORDER) look like if you took your curiosities seriously, your imagination seriously, if you sat with your ideas long enough to follow them everywhere and know them so well you couldn’t shut up about them? Think of all the times you hear someone you love talk about something they love, and how it lights them up. Is that not a fucking gift? We invent these moments for ourselves every time we follow an idea onto the page. Why be shy about it? We’re lucky! Embrace that!

I suspect every writer wants endless validation; the trouble is understanding you have to validate yourself first before anyone else gives a shit. Your confidence may be a bluff at first - that’s fine, actually. It comes and goes, like clear skin. But we have to get better at not rejecting ourselves or our work before we even breathe it out into the world. Shame is not sustainable. You cannot hope to survive as an artist relying purely on someone else’s belief in your work to get you by. No one else will ever be enough. There will always be one more accolade you’re looking for. And to live only on the mirage of other people’s regard - it is a desperate way to live. I beg of you to find your own confidence. It doesn’t even have to be in you. It should, at the very least, be confidence in your ideas and the merit of pursuing them.

There will inevitably be rejections. There will be disinterest. I mean this so sincerely - and? Not everyone has to get you, but are you at peace with your own pursuit? If the thought of owning your artistry makes you cringe, and you are forever minimizing it, you are already expecting to fail, pre-empting the grief of bad experiences. It doesn’t actually make it hurt less. You may start to believe your own self-deprecation. It’s actually so easy to point at your own scars and vulnerabilities. I dare you to operate from a position of joy and glee and curiosity. If it feels silly, it’s because you thought being insincere would protect you. Sure, it does that - it protects you from opportunities and realized potential. Why self-sabotage?

Practice explaining what you’re working on. Out loud, in an empty room. Feel like an idiot, it comes with the task. You will notice that talking it out helps you figure out the weakest parts of an argument, unexplored territory around your original question, silly diction, improper syntax. Breathing life into your work off the page helps the work on it, and across all kinds of mediums. You begin to live in the work the same way it lives in you. And when you are in it, when it becomes so familiar, it becomes stronger and more comfortable and hopefully more welcoming to other people. So when you are asked, reasonably, what you’re working on, you can just open the door to your mind palace and gesture in, an incredible host of your own imagination. You prepared for this.

This is a practice I have been trying for several years. I learn something new every time. It’s a gut-check on my motives, where I am in life, where I am in the work; it helps me understand there is in fact a boundary between the work and my life. It helps me figure out if I’m lying to myself and the reader, it helps me figure out how to be braver, how to go further in. All of this was just to say: please own your shit. Have some courage! WE NEED BRAVE BITCHES!

---

Please feel free to practice talking about what you’re working on (and excited about) in the comments. I am happy to cheerlead you.