Don’t ask me how I got started on this rabbit trail, but last night I found myself reading posts on Stop The GR Bullies; that’s a website dedicated to bullying people who bullied them first, it would seem. Anyway, while skimming the posts on there I saw a couple of self-published authors make a derisive comment about a stranger.
I know none of these folks, but the derision hit home for me in a very real, painful way.
“Is she one of those people who is always writing a book that nobody has ever seen?” (I’m paraphrasing and cleaning it up a lot. There were more colourful adjectives stuck in the original.)
I am one of those people. I’m always writing books, but nobody ever sees them. Okay, my husband has. My sister has. Ivy Hogan has. People who read this blog have on the very rarest of occasions seen a sentence or a paragraph–which inevitably gets chopped. Carole McDonnell saw the first draft of pages from a book that is now binned. But other than that…yeah. Nobody has seen my books.
Why? Do they suck? I don’t think so. But I think I suck. And I think that I don’t deserve to have my work encroach upon other people’s time.
No, nasty people on Stop The GR Bullies, it’s not because I’m afraid of criticism; I live in criticism. The toughest critics that ever walked the earth are inside my own head, thank you. Nothing you say to me, ladled liberally with the bitter invective you polish off for your worst enemies, is going to be harsher than what I say to myself.
I recently learned a very stunning, startling, deep truth about myself. Knowing this truth, the roots of this self-flagellation, is freeing in a way because it allows me to step back and say “the perfect is the enemy of the good and the tyranny of your inner voice is the devil as taskmaster.” It’s helping me realise that I will never ever be good enough so I may as well carry on with being as good as I can be at the moment.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll be One Of Those People. I don’t know if I’ll finish a book and shop it or polish it up and self-publish it. I just don’t know. I hope to not be One Of Those People forever. But I have to admit that even though I firmly believe all that I just said about perfectionism and self-doubt I also don’t want to be One Of Those People who puts out substandard garbage, slopping over the puke from my brain into the slush pile of self-published books. Not all self-published and small press books are bad. Only a fraction of them are bad. But those that are bad seem to be written by people who don’t care how bad they are, who just want to say they have a Published Book and to lord that fact over those of us Other Ones Of Those People.
So I guess now I’m trying to decide who is the bigger bully; my own head or the nasty people who think people like me are a joke.
I think the bigger bully is in your head and I want you to put duct tape over her mouth right now because I want to read a Katherine Coble novel sooner rather than later.
Whoa. THIS hit me right where I live. Ouch. Copying, pasting, memorizing, keeping, and hopefully applying. “The perfect is the enemy of the good and the tyranny of your inner voice is the devil as taskmaster.”
Thank you for sharing!
I’m one of those people, too. I can take criticism because it can’t be half as bad as the voices in my own head. But I am surely going to self-pub SOON and allow the five people who care to read my book. Also, I’m with Jessica–I want to read a Katherine Coble novel. It seems you were talking about one that was historical fiction–Wales–with medical stuff. Yeah, that’s what I like.
Add me to the list who would be excited to read a Katherine Coble novel.
Aren’t all writers one of those people who are always writing a book that nobody ever reads – until it gets published? And then? What then? Does that make them “somebody?” I think it’s more important to write for your own best audience (yourself) and not for some fantom “somebody” out there who doesn’t even exist.
I think those bully authors meant someone who is always saying they are writing a book, but never do. I don’t like them either way they say it, however. I don’t think anyone who writes, even a third-string self pubber like me, should have contempt for a reviewer who hasn’t written or has a book in the drawer they keep looking at. That’s what we all were once.
As for perfectionism, you’re going to have a tough fight with it if you choose to write. Somewhere, someone will always think you are substandard, and have the reasons why. This is why we get authors behaving badly-the reviews confirm their inner bully, and they fight it in the only way they know how to, arguing. You have to write for yourself first, then care about the reception of your work by others second.
Still it’s hard, though. “No one likes to dress up as crippling self-doubt,” to quote Henri the existentialist cat.
“Not all self-published and small press books are bad. Only a fraction of them are bad. But those that are bad seem to be written by people who don’t care how bad they are, who just want to say they have a Published Book and to lord that fact over those of us Other Ones Of Those People.”
Not all bad books are self-published to lord over someone else. Sometimes people just really, really want to tell a story that doesn’t fit the big publishing houses’ mold.
Publish your writings, Katherine Coble! We want to read your stories, and they’re certain to be brilliant.