Writers Shame

Let's just abandon it

I had the most interesting conversation with another writer. You want to know what we talked about? Shame. They feel it and I feel it, and for different reasons.

Now, let me tell you about this writer. They are so smart and full of life, with solid writing habits. They’ve read everything. They have a very cool sounding manuscript that I can’t wait to see. I’m excited for this person. I am fired up to help them succeed in this difficult world of publishing. I am so glad I’ve connected with them!  But you know how they feel about where they are right now? They feel shame.

They told me how they read all my books, loved them, and how much they appreciated not only my work but what I post on social media. Really, it was about the nicest thing in the world to hear. But guess what I told them about how I feel about my place in the world of writing at the moment? I told them that I feel shame.   

On her website, the academic and New York Times bestseller Brené Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experience, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”

I want to talk about the shame that we writers experience. I’m not saying that we have a bigger or unique experience of shame. We don’t own the market here, but we seem to have our own brand of it and it shadows us the whole of our writer lives, ducking out of sight only during those brief occasions of tremendous success.

Also, we don’t necessarily feel “unworthy of connection”. It’s that others find us unworthy. And because our whole enterprise is to connect to the reader, romance the reader, astonish the reader, being told we are unworthy by others makes us feel we’ve failed.

Who are these others? The agent or editor or publishing sales director or whoever is the gatekeeper in our careers, who has evaluated our work and discarded it. Set it aside in favour of another (or many others). They find us unworthy. They make a decision, and we feel the shame.

Or maybe we have readers and a published book or two but we haven’t hit any major bestseller lists (or any bestseller lists at all) and we’ve not garnered significant reviews either. Now we’re afraid of being dropped. Or maybe we have already been dropped and we’re feeling shame. They tried us, found us wanting, and oh the shames burns.

A writer I know lost her agent last year, no fault of her own, and I get the sense she feels marooned. Shame is just around the corner, though not if I can help it. I’m messaging her to say don’t worry. One agent is nothing! I’ve been through three.

It might not even be one of these powerful gatekeepers who make us feel shame. It may be the “stats” on sales numbers. Boy, those can be really mean, horrible, sometimes career-damaging. I remember someone telling me the stats on Daniel Isn’t Talking in the UK were very good and I heard the news the way I hear news like “the biopsy was fine”. When it came to Dragonfly Girl the publisher seemed almost to enjoy telling me how bad the numbers were, as though this was all my fault. In fact, she told my agent, not me, but it hurt just as much.  Publishing that book, even though it is such a good YA novel that I get letters from readers, was one of the most painful experiences I’ve had in publishing.

Social media can be painful for many, too. We may feel shame over how few likes or retweets or restacks or comments appear on our posts. Here on Substack, we are constantly reading the great stories of people with thousands of subscribers and how they grew their audience. We may feel a bit wretched about that, even as we subscribe to them ourselves.

But look us! Subscribing, reading, liking, restacking. Look at us 5-starring another’s work! We are not so petty that we begrudge other writers’ success. We just want to find a place for our own. Even if sometimes we click on the little heart button or restack or sing praises, and feel a little behind, or a lot behind, we still do it. Even if on occasion as we cheerlead for another, we secretly wish we could do so with a gladder heart, we still do it. We feel shame that readers have chosen other writers to follow and we feel shame that we aren’t generous enough in spirit for it not to bother us.

But we are generous enough. We are talking about other books, buying and reading and spreading the word. We’re kind of awesome in fact, but we never feel it.

It’s that shame, getting the best of us even as we give our best.  We feel it at so many different times over the course of our writing careers. It really should stop. Can we make it stop?

Because when I was talking to this writer today, a person I consider my writing peer even though they haven’t got a publishing contract (yet), it hurt my heart to hear what was happening, that they were being overlooked. But it hurt even more that they took it so hard. I’m not overlooking you, I wanted to tell them. I’m right here. And while it may hurt to not have a contract yet, if I have anything to do with it, that sucker is on the way.

Of course, that contract will only dam the flow of shame for so long…eventually, the ubiquitous writer shame that follows so many of us may creep back, but hopefully it will be beaten away once more. It’s not always easy, but we can help one another to do just that.