First Person

Coming this weekend!

Manor Mill’s 2026 Writers Retreat will be held on November 12 – 15 at the Oldfields School in Glencoe, MD. On Saturday, November 14, the retreat will welcome Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling historical fiction author, for a keynote address.

Now with more me!

Writing and Submitting Short Stories to Literary Magazines
Saturday, November 14 @ 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM

Will Remains is a writer, editor, and blogger from Baltimore. Over two decades as a content creator for corporate clients, Will wrote thousands of news articles, white papers, and educational scripts, created multiple podcast and webinar series, and launched or overhauled numerous publications in various formats. In 2008, he founded Big Pulp, a line of genre periodicals and anthologies. From 2016 – 2024, he was EIC of a niche news publisher specializing in content for government and private sector attorneys. In 2024, Will stepped away from daily news deadlines and has since focused on his primary passion, creative fiction and non-fiction writing.

More of this year’s presenters include:

Tuesday Barnes: Resting and Reading the Body: Recentering the Self As Liberatory Practice for Creative Writing
Friday, November 12 @ 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM

Tuesday Barnes is an Applied Sociology and Social Justice PhD student at Morgan State University with a concentration in Community Development and Social Change. Tuesday was selected as the 2024-2025 Broadening Participation Research Fellow via Morehouse University, the 2024-2025 Research & Innovation Fellow via the Rutgers School of Education and the 2025 Urban Leaders Fellow to complete a policy fellowship in New Orleans.

Mel Edden: First Class Delivery: Polishing your Presentation for Readings
Friday, November 12 @ 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM

Mel Edden is a British poet, a 2025 Best of the Net Nominee and director of Manor Mill’s poetry events. Her own poems appear in Gargoyle, The Loch Raven Review, Meat For Tea, WWPH Writes, Welter, and in various anthologies. Mel edits our poetry anthology Poets of Manor Mill which is available for purchase in our gift shop, online and in local bookstores. She lives in Monkton with her husband and two delightfully rambunctious little Americans. Follow her on Instagram @meledden.

Jennifer Kinard: Stories in Miniature: The Spare Beauty of the Micro-Essay
Saturday, November 13 @ 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Jennifer Kinard delights in glimpsing the extraordinary in everyday moments. She writes micro-stories on Instagram (@jenkinard_wordlover) and creative nonfiction on culture, faith, and family on Substack. Her writing has been published by Navpress, MOPS Magazine, Redbud Hyphen, and numerous blogs.

Matt Hohner: Good Morning, Good Night: The Aubade and the Nocturne
Saturday, November 13 @ 9:00 AM – 10:15 AM and 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM

Matt Hohner won the 2023 Jacar Press Book Competition for his collection At the Edge of a Thousand Years, published in 2024. Thresholds and Other Poems, his first full-length book, was published by Apprentice House Press in 2018. Hohner has published in Poetry Ireland Review, Smartish Pace, Rattle: Poets Respond, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, and elsewhere. Hohner has held two residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and is Poetry Editor for Loch Raven Review.

Theresa Pickett: The Human Experience: Create Compelling Settings for Fiction and Non-fiction Travel Narratives
Schedule TBD

Theresa Pickett has been publishing her writing since 2010, with work appearing in publications including Business Insider and Hotels Above Par. A travel writer and former destination marketing professional, she has created content for destinations including Visit Howard County, MD, Visit Culpeper, VA, and Visit Raystown, PA. Her work explores the intersection of destination storytelling, personal perspective, and the unique experiences writers bring to a place.

Building on two successful one-day programs in 2024 and 2025, the retreat expands this year to encompass two full days of networking and learning opportunities, and an option for guests to stay overnight to extend the event to four days.

The full Thursday–Sunday residential experience includes meals and special evening activities. Single day and Friday-Saturday non-residential tickets are also available. Overnight guests will enjoy lodging, all meals, all day sessions, all evening programs, and additional special activities from Thursday through Sunday. Day pass guests will enjoy all day sessions & lunch and can add on evening sessions and grab dinner on their own.

Past years have attracted both new and experienced writers working in all genres and forms. Over the course of the weekend, you’ll explore a rich range of topics: craft and technique, querying and submissions, marketing, promotion, and much more.

For event location, itinerary, and reservations, click here! Manor Mill is offering early bird pricing until September 8 for day passes and residencies.

Manor Mill is a restored pre-revolutionary grist mill that houses a fine arts gallery, classes, a live music venue, ceramics studio and workshops, just over the hill from the Monkton Hotel in Baltimore County, MD.

Founded in 1867, Oldfields School is an independent all-girls day and boarding school serving grades 9 through 12. Its mission is to embrace each student’s authentic self, educate through collaboration, empower the individual voice, and inspire confidence and continual growth, leading to a life of purpose.

Enjoy this blog?

Subscribing is always free, but you can help me build my library!

I’ve put together a wish list of books on writing, history, research, and other subjects that feed my writing. If you’d like to support my work, pick one off the list and help me add another book to the shelf.

Send me a book!

You can also support the blog by reposting or forwarding this post to someone who might like it. I’d love to meet them!

A few weeks ago, I promised if you asked nicely I’d write up the memory that almost made the cut in my post on journaling.

Nobody asked, but when has that stopped me?

For this one, I go back a few more years to the end of the third grade. You might not think it so, but third grade was a pivotal year for me.

There was one day, during free time or perhaps during an activity that allowed for conversation, I don’t recall which, my friend Ted and I were talking about which churches our family went to. I probably asked first, as I was the only kid from my church who went to my school. I’d already come to suspect our religion was not one of the standards, so I was very curious about what other families did, especially those who didn’t go to any church at all. When I told Ted we were Mormon, he laughed and called to the class, “Hey! He’s Mormon!” and I tackled him and begged him not to tell anyone. Suspicion confirmed.

Third grade was also the year I kissed my friend John on the cheek and told him I loved him. He didn’t laugh but said very loudly “He kissed me!” so I tackled him and proclaimed loudly I had not.

Until I started writing this, I never suspected I had a go-to martial arts move, but apparently I was comfortable tackling my friends and prepared to use it. Before now, I had also never considered that perhaps this is when and why I adopted my rule of not revealing too much about myself. At my age, I’ve given up tackling, but other childhood habits like lying and begging are harder to break.

I don’t have too many other strong memories about third grade. I can visualize the classrooms and recall the kids, but no special times or events. But I do remember one specific day and one particular kid.

His name was Gary. He was a little guy, shorter and thinner even than me. For three years, I had been one of the two or three oldest kids in my grade, thanks to my January birthday, but also one of the two or three shortest. In third grade, however, two boys arrived who were shorter than me. I had moved up slightly in the line up.

Gary was one of those boys. We’ll get to the other one soon. Gary was a very nice kid and, as I mentioned, short. He also had a cleft palate. He spoke loudly, slowly and with a bit of a slur, and a deep South accent, but we kids had no trouble understanding him. No one teased him about it. We were old enough to know Gary’s condition was simply bad luck and young enough not to weaponize this. I remember him as a good-natured kid. The kids I might consider our social leaders treated him gently, as they treated me gently, knowing I didn’t like to play rough sports. I was the only boy in second grade given the privilege of being tagged out by touch, not tackle, during a game of Smear the Queer.

The irony! Like multiple levels.

Those kindnesses would end soon, but for the first few years of elementary school, I was among some really lovely children. Some odd ones, yes, but despite our lack of sidewalks and house numbers and the occasional same-sex kissing and the boy who would pull down his pants and underwear and show his wiener to anyone who asked, we weren’t unlike the kids in a Peanuts comic.

The specific day of third grade that stands out is the last day of school before summer. Report cards were handed out, grade advancement slips folded inside. Borrowed books were returned and inspected for damage. We were regularly threatened with having to pay for busted up books, but I don’t remember this ever being enforced. Of course, I excelled at first-day-of-class book jostling, finding the copies that had the strongest spines and fewest names written in the book plate. It was much easier maintaining the condition of a book that had passed through only four or five hands, rather than one with a dozen or more signatures, whose covers were attached by literal threads. I’m likely the only boy in third grade who gave a shit about this.

Naturally, on this last day, we were all wound up, talking about things we would do over the summer and looking through our advancement slips to find out our next teacher’s name and who would share our new class. We could barely sit still and mostly didn’t, unpoliced for the first time since September.

Except for Gary, who was sitting quietly by himself at one of the shared tables, his head bowed over his open report card. Someone noticed he was crying, and of course we investigated. Generally Gary did not need protecting, but being smaller and weaker than us, he brought out that instinct. We boys had a code and picking on Gary was strictly verboten.

Between his crying and his crooked lip, Gary wasn’t speaking as clearly as he could, but eventually he made us understand. Inside his report card was not an advancement slip, but a note saying he had failed the third grade and would have to repeat it. He wouldn’t be in any homeroom with any of his friends, but with a whole new batch of kids a year younger than him. He was being left behind.

What could a bunch of eight and nine year old boys do? I didn’t know what to say but I and some others sat with him, and one or two of the boys patted him on the back and told him it would be ok. I’m glad they were there because I didn’t know how to do that kind of thing and I would feel awful now if no one had done it. Gary sobbed, the kind of choking wail you hear at funerals. And our teacher, seeing this, did nothing.

I did not know how to comfort Gary, but even at 9 years old, I knew this was not how he should have received this news. It was mean to tell him without preparing him, not gently, not prepared to answer questions or reassure him, and not even to tell him but to make him read it on a slip of paper – Failed marked with a red X – alone but also in front of all of us, while we were celebrating, without his parents there, and then to leave him inconsolable in his plastic seat before sending him home on the bus to tell his mom and dad.

As an adult, I cannot fathom being that indifferent to a little boy with obvious physical difficulties, as well as some learning challenges that were not visible to us kids. To do this at all was bad enough, but to ignore him after and leave us there to clean up? Without any preparedness, we kids were better at being adults than her.

The other boy in my grade who was shorter than me was a boy named John, not the one I kissed. I kissed John G. John R. was a little asshole, the kind of kid who laughed when someone made a mistake or embarrassed themselves, not merely laughed but brayed about it, loudly, made sure no one missed it, as reliably as a rooster crowing about the sun.

He reacted similarly to Gary’s troubles, glee spreading across his face as he mocked him. Even the scolding he received from the other boys didn’t deter him. We were not at all protective of John R. but we still believed in not picking a fight with someone smaller than us. We were not a physically intimidating bunch, and John, who was neither especially liked nor disliked but an entity unto himself, wasn’t swayed by our scorn. He had nothing to gain or lose by cooperating or not.

He circled the table like a shark, picking at Gary from all sides, alternating between mocking his tears and laughing at him being left behind. Eventually he was chased off, but like all Napoleon-sized bullies, John R. was not easy to deter. Emboldened by his mouth, protected by his size, he made sure everyone on the other side of the room knew what happened. But after some minutes of this, he either came too close or said one thing to many, and Gary hit John with a flying tackle that slammed both boys into the wall and then to the ground, Gary on top, fists pummeling.

Unlike my friendly tackles, which honestly were more of a shove followed by a wrestling pin, this was the tackle heard around the third grade, and probably the second and the first. Gary and John did not merely fall to the ground the way young boys fighting will wrestle themselves down. John did not merely bump the wall of our classroom. He collided with his fate the way a child falling off monkey bars cracks down on concrete. The hollow metal room dividers rang across the entire floor –

THOOM

And Gary did not merely flail at John the way angry boys will, but rained down precision punches. He may have struggled with third grade, but he knew how to fist fight.

While it would be unseemly for an adult to look back with satisfaction at the memory of an eight year old child being slammed into a wall and having the stuffing beat out of him, from the perspective of my nine year old self, that crash echoed through the classroom like the hammer of justice. After eight months of cackling in our faces, John finally got his mouth pasted shut for him. He’d finally crossed a line and Gary crossed one as well, from humiliation to fury, and used his own pent up need for satisfaction to put John in his place. I don’t know what else fueled his fists, but it was more than one day’s grief.

Needless to say, no one intervened on John’s behalf. This pounding was well earned, and even if we would not have picked a fight over something as trivial as John’s incessantly running mouth – that would have been unfair, given his size, and also an admission that he’d gotten under our skin – we also might have described his comeuppance as long overdue. It was about damn time someone shut him up. John’s mistake was giving someone a good reason and we were not about to stop it. Finally, he had picked on someone his own size.

Our teacher, as was her custom, did next to nothing. She did eventually break up the fight, John’s face red and wide with shock, crying but not bleeding, and sent the boys in different directions. The other boys did intervene here, blaming John entirely for his own beating. We were glad Gary did not get in trouble for fighting – though on the last day of school and on a day when she’d failed him for third grade, what could else could she do to him? However, John also did not receive much more than a mild admonition about not teasing. We could only hope that good thumping left a mark.

All in, third grade was a wild year. It was the year I learned being left behind was not an idle threat, and that adults were even more callous to children’s feelings than I already knew. My suspicion that being Mormon was both weird and undesirable was confirmed. My Cub Scout den mother was a woman who shot her husband. I discovered just how much my mom loathed my friend Danny’s mom and that this would make it very hard to continue being friends with him. And I kissed my first boy.

That’s a lot for an 8-year-old.

Enjoy this blog?

Subscribing is always free, but you can help me build my library!

I’ve put together a wish list of books on writing, history, research, and other subjects that feed my writing. If you’d like to support my work, pick one off the list and help me add another book to the shelf.

Send me a book!

You can also support the blog by reposting or forwarding this post to someone who might like it. I’d love to meet them!

It’s not too late to register for Manor Mill’s 2026 Writers Retreat on November 12 – 15 at the Oldfields School in Glencoe, MD. On Saturday, November 14, the retreat will welcome Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling historical fiction author, for a keynote address.

Presenters this year include: Constance Hays Matsumoto (Write Your Book With Purpose); Michelle Jabès Corpora (AMA on publishing); Marian Crotty (What Happens Next: Building Narrative Suspense); Candice Lola (Haunted Inheritance: How to Write Horror While Integrating Folklore); Matt Hohner (Good Morning, Good Night: The Aubade and the Nocturne); and more!

Building on two successful one-day programs in 2024 and 2025, the retreat expands this year to encompass two full days of networking and learning opportunities, and an option for guests to stay overnight to extend the event to four days.

The full Thursday–Sunday residential experience includes meals and special evening activities. Single day and Friday-Saturday non-residential tickets are also available. Overnight guests will enjoy lodging, all meals, all day sessions, all evening programs, and additional special activities from Thursday through Sunday. Day pass guests will enjoy all day sessions & lunch and can add on evening sessions and grab dinner on their own.

Past years have attracted both new and experienced writers working in all genres and forms. Over the course of the weekend, you’ll explore a rich range of topics: craft and technique, querying and submissions, marketing, promotion, and much more.

For event location, itinerary, and reservations, click here!

Manor Mill is a restored pre-revolutionary grist mill that houses a fine arts gallery, classes, a live music venue, ceramics studio and workshops, just over the hill from the Monkton Hotel in Baltimore County, MD.

Founded in 1867, Oldfields School is an independent all-girls day and boarding school serving grades 9 through 12. Its mission is to embrace each student’s authentic self, educate through collaboration, empower the individual voice, and inspire confidence and continual growth, leading to a life of purpose.

The Manor Mill arts community will hold its 2026 Writers Retreat on November 12 – 15 at the Oldfields School in Glencoe, MD. On Saturday, November 14, the retreat will welcome Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling historical fiction author, for a keynote address.

Building on two successful one-day programs in 2024 and 2025, the retreat expands this year to encompass two full days of networking and learning opportunities, and an option for guests to stay overnight to extend the event to four days.

The full Thursday–Sunday residential experience includes meals and special evening activities. Single day and Friday-Saturday non-residential tickets are also available. Overnight guests will enjoy lodging, all meals, all day sessions, all evening programs, and additional special activities from Thursday through Sunday. Day pass guests will enjoy all day sessions & lunch and can add on evening sessions and grab dinner on their own.

Past years have attracted both new and experienced writers working in all genres and forms. Over the course of the weekend, you’ll explore a rich range of topics: craft and technique, querying and submissions, marketing, promotion, and much more.

For event location, itinerary, and reservations, click here! Manor Mill is offering early bird pricing until September 8 for day passes and residencies.

Manor Mill is a restored pre-revolutionary grist mill that houses a fine arts gallery, classes, a live music venue, ceramics studio and workshops, just over the hill from the Monkton Hotel in Baltimore County, MD.

Founded in 1867, Oldfields School is an independent all-girls day and boarding school serving grades 9 through 12. Its mission is to embrace each student’s authentic self, educate through collaboration, empower the individual voice, and inspire confidence and continual growth, leading to a life of purpose.

In his weekly newsletters, James Clear (Atomic Habits) shares three quotes to motivate and inspire his readers to expand their view of the world and work towards their best possible life.

Here is a recent quote that I liked very much:

Many of the best things in life are endless.

Being in a great relationship. Staying fit and healthy. Doing work that fulfills you. Being a good parent, coach, or teacher.

Stop worrying about accomplishing these things and instead focus on building a life where you continually practice them.

The important stuff has no finish line.

Improving your craft as a writer and becoming the best version of your self is endless.

I hope you never finish.

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An ode to days when writers were paid to write.

In our last episode, I noted how much the writing world had changed since Anne Lamott first published Bird by Bird, in which she described receiving advance money on an unwritten novel, including additional funds released after she submitted two failed drafts.

A hundred years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald supported a lavish lifestyle with income from his writing, the majority of which came from his short fiction rather than his novels and screenplays. Fitzgerald was reportedly paid as much as $4,000 for a short story, or about $70,000 in today’s money. In 1925, he earned $2,000 from a single short story, more than he earned in royalties from the first year of sales of The Great Gatsby.

In an entry in her Diaries and Notebooks, Patricia Highsmith recorded a few early sales of short stories. She earned $800 per story, or the equivalent of about $14,000 today. Earlier in her diaries, she mentions paying about $50 per month in rent. So the sale of one short story per year was sufficient to pay rent on a small apartment in New York City, with money to spare for utilities and telephone. I didn’t crunch the numbers, but a second short story was probably enough pay for food and a reasonable clothing and entertainment allowance.

That’s a far cry from $4,000, but bear in mind these were Highsmith’s first significant sales. She wasn’t yet the author of Strangers on a Train or The Talented Mr. Ripley. She was 25-year old comic book writer Pat Highsmith of New York, paying a year’s rent with one story.

Outside of the New Yorker or perhaps Harper’s, paying markets for fiction today are going to tap out around that 1947-era $800 bucks, if you’re lucky to get that high. A long story in the New Yorker might get you that $14,000, but only if you come with credentials. And even that won’t pay a year’s rent in New York City.

A million years ago, when I started submitting short fiction, most markets paid in comp copies, and a few paid $50 to $150. There were more top tier markets, like Playboy and The Atlantic, but unless your name was Kurt Vonnegut or Joyce Carol Oates, you weren’t catching those paydays.

As usual, I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Even if you’ve tempered the influence of your backstory ghosts, you may backslide into negativity. You will experience creative setbacks and rejections, and the voices of imposter syndrome are never louder than when they are given the opportunity to say I told you so.

This is inevitable, but you can use the interim time wisely by learning to be aggressively positive. If you spend more than 3 minutes a month on social media, you’ve probably seen the meme exploring ominous positivity:

You will be ok. You have no choice.

Everything will turn out fine. You cannot stop it.

You will succeed. It is inevitable.

Close your eyes and visualize a time or place when you felt most at ease with your creativity or when you felt that you were achieving a high level of success or excellence. Take some deep breaths and enjoy that feeling. Maybe some of your work appeared in print. Maybe someone gave you a meaningful compliment. Perhaps you uplifted another writer when they needed it. Or you might simply remember a time when you enjoyed writing or other creative work without any negativity and simply reveled in the joy of expressing yourself. Don’t rush. Sit with your creative joy for a bit. This is the good stuff.

Another tactic is to stop talking about writing as though it were our punishment. Eliminate phrases like shitty first draft, open a vein and bleed on the page, and I hate writing but love having written from your emotional repertoire.

Consider assembling a new set of phrases to counteract the voices of negativity when they arise. While your work may be viewed subjectively, there also exist unarguable facts about your creative process and work. Write down some statements that even the nastiest person would not be able to refute. Here are a few of mine:

• I genuinely enjoy the time I spend writing.
• I write because I want to, not for any outside gain.
• I have goals and I meet them.
• I love learning and exploring through writing.
• I love talking to other creative people and hearing about their work.

These are not subjective statements, nor are they aspirational. Your ugly voice can argue that your writing isn’t any good or that you’ll never be financially successful, but it cannot challenge the fact that you love writing, learning, and other creative people.

Fill your head with good thoughts and don’t give those fuckers an inch.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them. Need more content? Join my mailing list!

The voices of discouragement are the writer’s ghosts, not so different from the backstory wound a protagonist must overcome to succeed on his journey. Fortunately, we generally do not require a major inciting incident or significant quest to overcome these bad thoughts. Unfortunately, we still have to do the Work – looking inside, examining, unraveling, and refreshing our ways of thinking.

Often, the ghosts of our creative pasts are born of shame – the times we were teased because we loved to read or write, the criticisms and rejections we’ve received, and the very bad advice about whether this work is worthwhile.

Oddly enough, compliments also can be a kind of trap. Do you have fans of certain kinds of stories? Has some of your work sold better than the rest? Have your writing group peers told you they love certain elements of your stories, style, or voice? People starved of encouragement are prone to lean into the qualities that earn them praise, often to their detriment.

All these ghosts – good and bad – can hold us back from trying something new. We might be afraid of rejection, criticism, or failure. We might believe we should stick with the familiar, rather than try that new style or genre we’d like to work in. We might lean into the qualities that others like best, such as lush description, fight scenes, or comedy. After all, we don’t want to drive away they very people that are encouraging us today.

The good news is that we don’t have to live with our ghosts.

For today, take some time to think about what people have said about your writing and ability, either positive or negative. Do you agree? Are you satisfied with those observations and judgments? How have those opinions defined you? Have they held you back from trying something new?

Sit with those answers a bit, and then also take some time to accept and appreciate where you are on your creative path. Show some love for your strengths and successes, as well as your weaknesses and failures. Examine without judgment where you are today and celebrate this moment in time.

This might not be easy for you, but let me give you a tip: Right now, someone is looking at you and whatever you’re doing and where you are on your journey, and they admire you. They want to get where you are. They want to be like you.

And here you are, already doing it.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them. Need more content? Join my mailing list!

When I write about the ugly voices in a writer’s head – as I did last week – it is almost always because I am dealing with one in the moment or am anticipating a visit sometime soon. If I submit a harangue about dealing with personal demons, it is not out of the goodness of my heart. It’s pure self-defense.

Writing is great exorcise.

One unfortunate comorbidity of ugly voices is the desire to place blame. And there is plenty to go around. The voices aren’t ephemeral. They existed in our past and I bet they sound like someone you know, someone who was supposed to embrace and encourage you. If not their actual voice, you hear the syntax and rhythm of people who discouraged, insulted, ignored, or undermined you.

When it would have been kinder – and less work – to lift you up, these voices decided to kick your legs out from under you. It’s easy to blame them for the opportunities we missed or when we feel ten (or thirty) years behind where we should be. If only they had…If only they hadn’t…

But what if you decide that you don’t need what that person withheld? When you sit down to write and there’s no one but you and a laptop or pen and paper, what else do you really need?

• Do you really need your family’s encouragement before you can write?
• Do you need your friends to read your novel?
• Once you’ve paid your bills and tidied up the house, do you need anyone’s approval of how you spend your time?
• Must you have a conversation with someone whose eyes glaze over when you talk about your work?
• Do you need that company in your head?

You don’t need any of those things. Are those nice to have? Yes, absolutely, and if you are lucky enough to have any of them in your life, stop what you’re doing right now and express your appreciation.

But if you don’t? Join the club.

For years I believed other writers and artists had supportive families and hordes of artsy friends who loved talking about their work and tons of collaborative opportunities and spouses who volunteered to cook, clean, and watch the kids so they could have time to create, while I – the turd in the punchbowl of life – struggled on alone.

This was both melodramatic and untrue. Nearly every writer I know has experienced indifference to their work, if not outright negativity. Yes, you will encounter writers who have loving parents and spouses who pay the bills and a circle of supportive creative folks but they are not to be trusted and should never be invited to our gatherings.

I once read a comment that gave me a different perspective on being loved as a writer. A new novel by Stephen King can be expected to sell north of 1 million copies in the United States, a rare feat that we’d all love to duplicate. However, given that the US population sits around 330 million, there are at any moment approximately 329 million people who don’t give a single shit about a new Stephen King book, and that’s just in one country.

Yes, that’s still a pretty good problem to have, but ask: Does SK spend a lot of time thinking about those 329 million people? Does he write for them? Is he trying to please them? Does he fret about their opinion of him? Does he wonder why his books sell a million copies but not two million?

He does not.

If Stephen King can ignore the indifference of 329 million people and numerous critics when he sits down to write, there’s no reason we can’t do likewise, even if we have to discount an extra million people, give or take.

We can get by without someone to prop us up. And I’d argue that when we let go of what we don’t need, the voices in our heads have a bit less power. They are still demanding, but when they show up to harass or withhold, their volume is lower.

Those voices are selling something we don’t need. Close the door in their face.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them. Need more content? Join my mailing list!

This will be a rambling post. I do that sometimes. I mean to write one thing and quickly wander into completely different territory. Thinking out loud on paper, saying something to figure out what I’m trying to say. You’ve been warned.

This started as a post about continuous learning in the writing world and how it should be fun and how it may manifest in various ways at different points in our creative journeys.

I like learning new stuff, especially when it comes to my writing. I love craft books. I follow about 20 blogs that post writing advice and have an insanely well-organized bookmark system for saving the good articles. I can spend hours researching story details, and have learned to be wary of the wiki-hole.

I have always approached my writing as a discovery practice. When I was young, I wrote as a way of imagining solutions to questions I couldn’t answer. When I was older, I wrote to figure out if I had anything worth saying. Now that I have some idea, I want to discover the best way to express myself. Over the years, I’ve also played with form, writing short stories, novels, graphic novel scripts, plays, and poetry. While some of the skills overlap and some lessons learned in one form can be applied to the others, each has its own dialect that needs to be investigated and mastered (or mastered-ish, as the case may be). While I bring some skills to the table, I struggle with others, and I know that every story is going to present its own challenges.

This mindset has its drawbacks. I find it hard to feel like a project is finished, because I know there’s more I can do to perfect it. I’m a jack of many writing forms, but master of none. I don’t write in a set genre, which makes it difficult to answer the question “what do you write?” or even “who are you?”

That may be a deeper inquiry for another day. But I know I’ll never be the writer who finishes a novel on Friday, proofreads over the weekend, and uploads to Amazon on Monday. I don’t want to be the writer who gets miffed when beta readers run the red pen over my manuscript. And I never want to find myself writing the same thing over and over.

I like the stretch. I like playing in different sandboxes. I enjoy the challenges. I’m not afraid of doing the work. It’s fun. Unlike Dorothy Parker, I love writing, and am indifferent to having written. I’m weird.

Do you love learning new skills, craft techniques, factoids? I’m honestly curious, though I’m already betting you do.

But also, I wonder about those who don’t, the writers who skip peer feedback and proper editors and multiple drafts, the writers who do indeed type “the end” to a novel one Friday and are published by the next.

There’s something to be said for the “write and be done” approach, but must it come at the expense of writing your best? Don’t you want to know if the middle of your novel falters or if your dialogue is bland or if you’ve written essentially the same novel multiple times? Is it worth it to cram 25 books on your Amazon profile over the course of a few years (and in some cases, less)?

On the one hand, I admire anyone who doesn’t give a fuck what other people think. This is an important life skill. On the other, I’m bewildered (appalled?) by creative people who appear to give so little thought to the excellence – or lack thereof – of their work.

There is the Dunning-Kruger effect, of course. And some people are just that lazy. If you’ve spent any amount of time scrolling social media forums for writers, you’ve encountered the lazy ones. They’re easy to spot. I’d like to say they’re the minority, but some days, I’m not so sure. For sanity’s sake, let’s agree they are the minority. Loud, but a minority.

So what is it? As I ponder and ramble, I keep circling back to the skill – the confidence – of not caring what other people think. It’s attractive.

But also, I think it’s a trauma response.

A lot of us grew up with criticism and bullying, and so even gentle and honest feedback can feel hurtful. At our best, we grow out of it and learn to find the balance between healthy self-acceptance and a desire to grow and excel. But sometimes we fall short and a mild comment may feel like a personal attack. We have to tune it out or we drown. Call it the fight, flight, or freeze out instinct.

I’ve talked to plenty of writers who were not encouraged to be creative or were even shamed for being unrealistic, unserious, or unworthy. I know people who were talked out of pursuing a creative occupation or passion, because there wouldn’t be any money in it or because they were foolish to believe they were good enough or because the very concept of being creative was too stupid to take seriously, as though they proposed a career as flag pole sitter.

In my case, when not outright ignored, I was told that writing is a lonely life, that the books and writers I liked were garbage, and that if I was serious about writing, I should volunteer to type up the church bulletin every week. On a scale of Useless to Hurtful, I’d place that latter advice somewhere between “Are you being stupid on purpose?” and “Please kill me now.” Even my English professors didn’t know what to say about a career in writing, except that I should consider teaching. In those days, all the writers we studied were dead, so perhaps they believed we were no longer making new ones.

So it happens. A lot. No wonder some of us press the publish button the moment we finish. If we don’t, we might talk ourselves out of it completely. Publish and be damned indeed.

And even under the best circumstances, critical feedback is tough. When we’re already dealing with a group of judgy voices in our heads, criticism can hit like a moral judgment, and suddenly a few paragraphs reflect poorly on our status as writers, or even on our worth as people.

A real writer wouldn’t have made that mistake. A normal person wouldn’t have written that. An intelligent person wouldn’t have wasted their time. Who are we trying to kid?

I had – have – a difficult time overcoming this emotional hurdle. I put a lot of myself into my fiction. Most of my characters have at least a little bit of my history, opinions, observations, and sense of humor. Even when my characters are my polar opposites, my story choices, theme, and genre express a point of view. At heart, the simple phrase “I believe this story is worth telling” is a damn bold artistic statement. So, if my writing is me and my writing is shit, it logically follows that I am shit.

So rather than laziness, maybe the resistance to feedback arises from the receipt of too much criticism. Being open to learning (revising, editing) may feel like admitting defeat so instead we stand up for ourselves. We scream into the ether: “I did this because I wanted to and I’m proud of it and I don’t care what you think about it.”

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. Let’s make a pact to stop doing this to ourselves.

All love to Anne Lamott, but let’s start by discarding the term “shitty first draft.” It’s amusingly blunt, but perhaps no longer helpful. Instead, let me suggest discovery draft or brainstorming draft. I call my first drafts the “barf draft” but I don’t mean that pejoratively. The barf draft gets everything out of my head and onto the page. It may be messy but it’s colorful and it gives me a good look at what I’m digesting. Most of it will be cleaned up, and this is where the analogy breaks down so I’ll stop.

When you request feedback on a piece of writing, don’t joke that it sucks or preemptively explain what’s wrong with it. A great practice is to go in with questions. Did the dialogue sound true? Was that joke funny or did it sound mean? Is the protagonist as sympathetic on paper as he is in my head? How would you describe the theme? Bringing your own questions guides your beta reader to where you need their focus and can make critiques easier to swallow, even when someone points out a flaw you didn’t anticipate.

When you approach feedback and discussion from a place of curiosity and learning, you can dull feelings of inadequacy and instead come into the critique with the humble admission that you simply don’t know everything there is to know, even about your own story. When you hit a rough patch in your novel or don’t know where to go next, ask yourself what you need to learn and then go learn it.

As writers, let’s revel in the fun of exploration, of learning, developing our skills, deepening our insights, and putting the best parts of ourselves out into the world. Let’s agree that feedback is awesome. It’s a gift of someone’s time and we should embrace it when we’re lucky enough to receive it.

This is a mindset shift. It takes practice. I still have a hard time with imposter syndrome, so I’m in the arena with you. I want very badly not to suck. The world teaches us that learning is boring and imperfection is something to be ashamed of and that personal taste should be crowd-approved. It can be difficult to unlearn that. But if we can adopt this viewpoint, we become more open to the lessons that writing – and life – can teach us.

In the end, learning should be a joyful thing and if I wish anything for my writer friends this year, it’s that you find all the joy you can in writing.

Even if you publish your novel without asking for feedback.

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