When I first started writing I had a lot of guilt. Guilt that I wasn’t spending as much time with my family, guilt that I wasn’t as up to date with the housework, guilt I was doing something that I enjoyed for myself (God forbid!). Then there was the guilt when things weren’t working out. I had spent years honing my craft, working on my novels and no one wanted to publish them.
That’s where the shame came in. The feeling that I was doing something wrong by spending (or wasting?) my time writing had morphed into feeling that I was wrong. Who was I to think I could make money doing something that I loved? There must be something wrong with me. The result:
I stopped seeing writing as a creative outlet and started thinking about is as something that I was failing at.
The shame in that is something that most writers would relate to. Even published authors feel shame when their book doesn’t sell well. Or maybe it sells well, but they don’t make any award lists. Or maybe they make the award list, but they don’t win. It can be endless.
The difference in how to navigate shame and guilt as a writer is complex. For guilt you can take steps to manage the process. For me I would make sure I tried to write when my family wasn’t home and then spend time with them when they were. I stopped watching television (me time) and wrote instead. Surely that meant I shouldn’t feel guilty. And you know what? It did help.
For shame – when you have convinced yourself that it is you that is the problem and not something you have done – it’s a lot harder to pull yourself out of it. How do you find a definitive way to process the feelings?
In Brené Brown’s TED talk ‘Listening to Shame’ she talks about the notion that if you put shame into a petri dish it needs three things to grow exponentially.
1. Secrecy
As writers we can tend to keep things to ourselves. It took me over a year to tell my husband I was writing and even longer to tell friends and family. When I think about it maybe this was where the shame started to grow. We hide away our notebooks, close the laptop when people come into the room. But that’s just when things are going well. We’ve only recently started writing and everything is young and fresh and exciting. But what about the not so great things that happen to us? Days when we didn’t write, two rejections in a day, emails from publishers telling us about our low books sales. We are gutted. It hurts. We feel failure.
2. Silence
We sit in those thoughts, bottling them up so they grate along at the excitement writing gives us and the belief that we can make it (however that looks for each person), whittling down our self-esteem. Someone may ask how our writing is going. We laugh, say publishing is hard and a slow process and change the subject. If we keep these feelings to ourselves, we are welcoming shame into the fold.
3. Judgement
Then we judge ourselves. We think we are not good enough to write. We put away the laptop or notebook. Cancel our Query Manager and ProWritingAid subscription (I actually did this) and we stop writing. We no longer feel failure – we are a failure.
How can we as writers overcome the shame we feel towards our writing journey?
SELF-EMPATHY
I have an abundance of empathy for other people. I am a nurse and empathy comes as easily for me as breathing. Except when it comes to one person – me. If I make a mistake, I am overly hard on myself. If I don’t make a deadline (usually made up by me), I feel ashamed. I haven’t published a book yet, so what is wrong with my writing? What is wrong with me?
The answer to that last question is: nothing. I have written five books and created characters all from my mind. And for the most part – I immensely enjoyed the process. One of these books people liked so much they put it on shortlists. I’m doing OK.
I remind myself this by:
· Positive Talk – my writing brings me joy and even if I am not published, I would still write so I can experience the feeling of losing myself in a story I created.
· Forgiveness – I process the emotions that are coming up and then I let them go. It is OK for me to take time to do things I love that are creative, even if nothing comes of it.
· Mindfulness and Meditation – being present in the moment brings me joy. It also reminds me that my life isn’t all about writing. I have so much to be thankful for. Meditating grounds me, bringing me more into my body, increasing my self-esteem.
· Rest and Restore – while I love writing, I know I need to take breaks before it turns into burnout. My things are reading in the bath, taking walks in nature and listening to podcasts/subliminals.
The above list might look different for you but remember to always be kind to yourself. We might have road bumps along the way in our publishing career, but it is a journey and if we don’t enjoy the journey, then what is the point?
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