My work inbox is a form of perpetual hell for a lot of reasons atm, but somehow thereâs something worse than the essential oil cultists attempting to make it entirely unusable on a daily basis, and thatâs the sheer number of editing requests from young and first time authors who donât even really want editing, they just want someone to reassure them theyâre not Problematicâą and theyâre genuinely scared to death of their potential readers.
Theyâre so hyperfixated on the terror of inadvertently fucking up and being dragged across the internet, that they canât even bring themselves to finish their work. So instead of answering questions about how to fix narrative flow, character arc and making grammar changes and fixing typos, I spend a lot of my time answering things like this:
âBut what if someone hates it?â
Welp. Canât please everyone I guess.
âBut what if I fucked up this partâŠâ
Did you do your research? Okay good, here is a list of sensitivity readers you can hire to help you make sure you actually understood the things you read. Youâve done all that and taken their advice onboard? Well done. Thatâs more than a lot of New York Times Bestsellers ever do.
âOkay but what if someone thinks I meant this when I meant that?â
See previous response.
âBut what ifââ
Your work is always going to be open to interpretation. Sometimes people will read into things you didnât even realize you were inferring. Sometimes you didnât actually infer anything but someone will find meaning anyway. Thatâs just how this works Iâm afraid. People find meaning in words. Itâs what us humans are particularly good at. Sometimes they find meanings we like, sometimes we donât. We have no control over how someone else uses their critical thinking skills (if at all).
âBut what if someone saysâŠâ
Someone is always going to say something youâre not going to like. They may even try to paint you as a villain to justify their dislike of you because they conflate personally liking something with universal worthiness. You can be the most Unproblematic âą, best researched, most woke individual on the planet, and someone is still going to find fault in what you did. Jesus Christ himself could descend from heaven with a short novella about petting puppies and being kind to each other, and heâd still end up nailed to the proverbial wall by someone.
You cannot control every aspect of how people will interact with your work, and I know that is terrifying when you watch the way fandom eats its own sometimes. But if you canât get over that terrorâŠyouâre never going to get anywhere. You need to accept that not everyone will always like you or your work, and itâs not easy. I struggle with it a lot sometimes, especially when people tag my posts with mean comments or personal remarks about how much they hate me, but unlike them I take my issues to therapy and work them out in an actual safe space, and Iâm telling you, they donât speak for everyone.
The echo chamber of discourse is loud, and sometimes you just need to take a step out and remember how to breathe and remind yourself not everyone needs to like you. And not everyone will, and thatâs okay. And hey, your work might bomb or it might not. But you wonât actually know until you try.
Perfection is unattainable. Donât kill yourself trying to get there. You can only do your very best, and even then your very best will shift and adapt with you as you grow and change as a person. Itâs inevitable. I dunno where Iâm going with this anymore. Permanence is an illusion and weâre all just sentient atoms hurtling toward the great unknown. Write your god damn story.
