The 7 Secrets of the Prolific Writer's Block (27 page)

Also, think about your motive when answering questions. If it’s to convince the questioner of the validity of your viewpoint—for instance, that money really isn’t the most important thing in writing or life—then you’re already in trouble. You can’t be responsible for what other people think, and certainly won’t convince anyone by lecturing. (See my book,
The Lifelong Activist
2
, and Dale Carnegie’s classic,
How to Win Friends and Influence People
, for more on this.) The best way to convince people about the value of your path is to live it productively and joyfully.

Your goal for any conversation should simply be to speak your truth, perhaps initially with as little embarrassment or shame as possible, and later on, like Jennifer Crusie, with bold energy and pride.

You might even get to the point where you actually enjoy the questions and value the opportunity for interaction and mutual education. I myself consider questions an homage to my shamanism, and am grateful to be doing something that elicits others’ interest.

A special type of difficult question is the nag, which I discussed in Section 3.8. When a friend or loved one repeatedly asks “How’s it going?” or “How much did you get done today?” it can stress you out even if they mean well. Use the techniques of collaborative solving (Section 4.11) to help them figure out a better way to support you.

Of course, there could be other reasons you don’t like to answer questions. Perhaps you find them invasive, or perhaps you don’t like small talk. Many writers, I’ve found, are deep thinkers who aren’t comfortable with superficial conversations, especially about their work.

If you’re reticent by preference, that’s fine; if it’s unwillingly (like shyness), consult a therapist. If you simply find the content of the questions challenging, however, then rehearsing a few answers ahead of time should help.

I believe that even the most reticent writer should be able to tell people that she’s a writer, since withholding a fundamental truth about yourself creates shame. What you say beyond that, however, is up to you. (I favor a lot of candor, but understand that that approach isn’t for everyone.) Delimiting conversations can be tricky, so here are a few tips:

Talk about writing in general.
The answer to “Where do you get your ideas?” doesn’t have to be some kind of uncomfortable self-exposure, but, “Well, you know, writers get them from all over. Sometimes it’s people we know, sometimes it’s something we read, and sometimes an idea just pops up in our heads.” If your questioner presses for specifics about your work, just say, “I actually don’t like to talk about the specifics of my work.” Most people will respect that.

Talk about your past works, but not your current work.
“I prefer not to talk about the project I’m currently working on” is a great reply that people usually respect. (Or, choose any work that you’re comfortable talking about and steer the conversation in that direction.)

Answer without justifying.
So you tell someone you’ve been working on your novel for four years, and they reply, “Isn’t that a long time?” Refrain from going into a long, defensive explanation of how complex your novel is, how much research it took, etc., and simply correct the questioner’s misinformation: “Actually, it’s not. Many novels take years to write.”

Avoid the urge to compare your pace with another’s—comparisons, as you know, being perfectionist (Section 2.7). If the questioner makes such a comparison, just say that every work, and every writer’s situation, is different.

Deflect.
E.g., “You know, I really don’t like to talk about my projects, but
you
seem very interested in books—what do you like to read?” Deflection usually works because most people like to talk about themselves even more than they like to talk about your writing.

Use humor.
If someone asks where you get your ideas, you can hem and haw, or simply say, “Mars.” (I guess this wouldn’t work so well if you were writing science fiction...)

If they ask how much money you make from your writing, you can embarrassedly mutter, “None.” Or you can grin crazily and say, “Oh, millions!”

The great thing about humor is that it often illuminates the naïveté of the original question, both for you and the listener. And if the questioner cluelessly persists, you can keep going:

“No, really, how much money do you make?”

“Enough that right after this party I’m going to stop off and pick up my new Bentley!”

If a listener is simply not getting it, though, I think it’s a good idea to switch to one of the other tactics, because while humor is effective, it’s also a little hostile, and can be interpreted as condescension.

Keep in mind that
how
you say something is at least as important as your choice of words: if you yourself are confident and at ease with your choices, all but the most obtuse questioners will get the point.

Always assume questioners are innocent until proven guilty. If someone asks me a clueless or even callous question, I try to give them benefit of the doubt, because I’ve asked my own share of clueless and callous questions over the years. Besides, many of those types of questions are rooted in perfectionism, and given that it’s ubiquitous in our society, and that I myself have only lately overcome it, how can I blame my questioners if they themselves are afflicted by it?

If someone is truly insulting or offensive or hostile, however, you shouldn’t tolerate that. You have two basic choices: to either not interact with him anymore, or (if you value the relationship) to explain to him why his comment was inappropriate and how you would like to be treated in the future. If you do that and he persists in mistreating you, I would cease interacting with him on any level. This may seem extreme—and it could be difficult, especially in the case of family members—but it’s essential. You have to protect yourself.

The most important tip about dealing with challenging questions is to never let them stop you. Here’s Joanne Levy again, dealing with her years of fielding questions before she’d been published:

It was really tough; I’m not going to lie. But if I stopped trying, then I would
officially
be a failure and the door would be closed—I would
never
be published. If I kept trying, there was still hope, no matter how slim. It was still something.

I hear the same message from high achievers in every field: “I thought about quitting during a difficult period, but knew that that wouldn’t accomplish anything.”

So you shouldn’t quit either.

1
Joanne Levy, “The Little Author Who Could,” Stet! (blog), February 2, 2011 (backspacewriters.blogspot.com/2011/02/little-author-who-could.html).

2
Hillary Rettig,
The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way
, Lantern Books, 2006 (www.lifelongactivist.com).

Chapter
7

“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”

—Marcus Aurelius

A
n inevitable consequence of coming out as a writer is that you will be rejected. Rejection is never pleasant, but unpleasantness is the least of the problems it can cause. Most cases of severe procrastination or writer’s block have been fomented by a harsh rejection. The writer may already have been perfectionist, as many of us are until we teach ourselves not to be, but the rejection pushed that perfectionism into overdrive.

I know all this because frequently in classes I will mention a disempowering scenario, such as a harsh workshop critique or a nasty comment from a teacher or family member, and someone will say, “You know, that happened to me, and I never finished a piece after that.” Or, “I never submitted any work after that.” Or, “I stopped writing after that.” Often the person wasn’t even aware of the link between the traumatic incident and the block until that very moment.

There’s no time limit on how long we’re affected by a harsh rejection, either. I routinely talk to people who vividly recall such an episode years or even decades earlier. “Forty years is nothing in the lifespan of toxic feedback,” notes Joni B. Cole in her book
Toxic Feedback
. “People forgive, but they don’t forget.”

I call a rejection that’s harsh enough to foment a block a “traumatic rejection.”

Rejection takes many forms beyond simple denial (i.e., of publication or admittance to a workshop), including harshness, disparagement, deprecation, dismissal, devaluation, bias, callousness, carelessness, capriciousness, neglect, ridicule, sarcasm, “snark,” and ostracism. Also: passive-aggressive withholding of information, time, or other support, and non-accommodation of reasonable requests. (Henceforth, I use the words “rejection” and “criticism” as shorthand for all of these.) Basically, everything that’s not an unequivocal acceptance contains elements of rejection.

Rejection also comes from many more sources than we realize, including publishers, editors, agents, teachers, mentors, colleagues (in or out of workshops), readers, reviewers, strangers (especially on the Internet, see Section 7.6), and, of course, your family, friends, neighbors, and day-job coworkers. One writer I know suffered traumatic rejection when she was cruelly cast out of a writer’s group she herself had helped found.

Here are some common mistakes writers make in the wake of a rejection:

(1)
We underestimate its impact.
Even a seemingly small rejection in an area you care a lot about can be painful or even crushing—which is why someone who accuses a writer of being “oversensitive” in the face of nasty or callous remark would likely react equally or even more strongly to a similar remark about, say, his parenting skills.

(2)
We fail to recognize it as rejection.
Ignorant or insensitive people sometimes say terrible things under the guise of “constructive criticism,” “tough love,” or “fun ribbing.” Even if you believe someone’s motives are basically well meaning—which is not always the case—you shouldn’t misidentify the nature of their act, or its effect on you. When, in
If You Want to Write
, Brenda Ueland says, “Families are great murderers of the creative impulse, particularly husbands,” she’s talking mainly about the kinds of sarcasm and ridicule naïve people think are benign or even helpful.

Joni B. Cole says, “It’s wrong to be brutally honest when you give feedback because any kind of brutality is just an excuse to take out your own failures on somebody else.”
1

(3)
We assume that the compliments cancel out the criticisms.
Constructive criticism always begins with something good to say about the writer’s work or at least his intentions or efforts, and from there tries to deliver a mix of compliments and criticisms. We often assume the compliments will take the sting out of the criticisms, but that’s not always the case, especially if the criticisms are harsh or the writer a perfectionist who mentally filters out compliments.

Because society itself is so perfectionist, you are likely to hear loads of bad advice in the wake of a rejection, such as “Get over it,” “Move on, already,” or “It goes with the territory.” Ignore it all.
It is crucial that you be 100% accepting of your reaction to a rejection, because (a) your feelings are always valid, and (b) judging them will only make you feel worse.
Above all, don’t chide yourself for being oversensitive. Writers feel the sting of rejection not because we’re weak, but because what we’re doing is difficult and because we have committed to an emotional openness that leaves us vulnerable (Section 6.4).

If you have worked to integrate yourself into compassionately objective communities (Sections 3.8 through 3.12), you should receive much more productive advice of the kinds I’ll offer in Sections 7.3 through 7.6.

1
Cole offers loads of great advice to those seeking to give constructive criticism, including: “style matters almost as much as substance.” She also suggests creating teachable moments by asking questions such as, “What were you intending to get across with your ending?” “How would you describe your protagonist?” and “Tell me where you’re heading with your plot.” Teachable moments, she says, “are about reciprocity—the feedback provider and the writer feed off each other in a stimulating way.” She also advises those critiquing others’ manuscripts to get specific: “Writers ... can handle specifics. It’s the generalities that bring them to their knees. ‘Your story didn’t work for me.’ ‘I don’t get it.’ ‘This isn’t my thing.’ These ... only serve to leave writers feeling more at a loss than usual.” She also points out that “red-penning every single instance of a recurring weakness in the text is ... wrong.”

T
he hurtfulness of a particular rejection depends on its context, including these elements:

Who is being rejected.
If you are perfectionist, then you will likely experience rejection much more painfully than if you aren’t. The symptoms of perfectionism described in Chapter 2—unrealistic standards of success, over-identification with work, excessive focus on product, excessive focus on external rewards, etc.—make you susceptible. In the worst cases you’ll be like a burn victim, reacting strongly to even slight criticism or neutral comments—or even to praise!

Again, this doesn’t mean you’re weak—only perfectionist. You wouldn’t be continuing to write if you were weak. Overcome your perfectionism and you’ll automatically become more resilient.

Rejection is also likely to hit hard—and to trigger another unproductive round of “Why am I even doing this?”—if you are ambivalent about your writing (Section 6.5).