A Writer's Soft Underbelly

Howdy, all! Want to say a quick thanks for all the birthday wishes. Had a great week, and your thoughtfulness made it even better. 

Also want to say welcome to the new followers. Hurricane Alex blew some of his good Web karma my way, and I always love having new faces around. 

Hope you enjoy my thoughts, I assure you I'll enjoy yours. (HINT HINT - Make sure you comment. Lots.)

Now for business. Well, as close to business as it gets around here...

A WRITER'S SOFT UNDERBELLY

Don't let the spectacles, cartoon covered sweatshirts, corduroy trousers and twitchy-eyed staring off into space fool you; writer's are a tough lot. At least we're supposed to be.

Rejection? Been there. Ridicule? Done that. Having our dreams hearts ripped out, danced upon and put back into place? Doing that tomorrow, and that's just breakfast.

We're all sarcastic and smarmy. We judge and get judged just for giggles. We're all artsy elitist who wear bulletproof underwear and trash even the most successful of our peers. 

"Blind monkeys with stumps for hands could've written that pig excrement, and somehow she made the NYTB list!"

 *maniacal laugh*




Yeah, not so much.

Don't get me wrong, some of us ARE smarmy. Some of us DO hate on our talented peers. Hell, some might actually own bulletproof undies. (Lots of powder is the key. So I'm told...)

And if you're going stay in the writing game for more than a couple of weekends a year, you're hide is going to toughen. It has to. That or you'll bleed to death from all the picking over that's required to actually get good at it.

So I suppose we are tough, in a fashion, but we're also enormously vulnerable.  

Rejection is a given. It sort of HAS to happen at some point. It's inevitable, but it still scares the hell out of us. We ridicule ourselves even if no one else does. We think what we do is utterly pointless and the worst kind of refuse--and that's often before we've written a word! 

It's just the process. It motivates. It drives. In that way, I think most writers would tell you a soft underside is just as key to doing the writing stuff as having thick skin. 

Vulnerability makes for good writing. Thick skin helps you survive until you find it.

Still, even if I know being sensitive is just part of the game, it sometimes gets the best of me.

If you're on Twitter I'm sure you've gotten at least one spam message that says something like: "Hey, have you heard what this person said about you?" or "People are saying bad things about your blog." There's always a link. It's usually from someone you don't know and are pretty sure never read anything you've written.

Now I've never clicked on one of those links, as I hear it's a pretty common virus scam. Plus, I'm not really one prone to care about what bad things people say about me, especially to the point I would electively subject myself to it. 

I like to think my momma raised me quicker than that; if you want to call me a jerk to my face, I'll listen, but don't expect me to track you down to hear it.

Still, it's a pretty insidious way to attack a writer's vulnerabilities. In this Web age, I think we're all a little sensitive to being talked about. It's the ugly flip side to the BUZZ (still hate that word) coin. 

Being talked about, having word spread about what we're doing on our blogs, Twitter, or with our writing, is important. It's how we grow beyond our coffee tables, desks, or wherever our writing habitats might be.

Most of us don't blog to be in a vacuum. We kind of hope other people will read it. Same with our writing. So when that talk/buzz turns negative, it can hurt.

Confession time: I'm paranoid about it. Not to the point I Google my name or anything, but I often wonder if people are out there saying bad things about me. 

Why am I paranoid? Over the years (?!) I've been doing this, I’ve caught a couple of other bloggers referencing my blog negatively on their blogs. I’m sure they didn’t think I’d read it, but I follow a good chunk of the people that follow my blog, and it popped up in my reader.

I use this as a personal example, but it makes me wonder if any of you have areas you're particularly vulnerable? Maybe I'm just touchy about the word-of-mouth stuff? 

I can take a bad critique pretty well. I wouldn't necessarily care if a non-writer said I was a fool. But something about the thought of having other writer-bloggers dissing me makes me squirm a little. 

In the end, I guess it's like all the other little things that eat at me as a writer: Eventually that spot will toughen and I'll be able to use it as motivation.

~EJW~