wrex-writes:

Attention: Writers who hate themselves and their writing

For a long time, I wrote like I was pulling a con. If I spun my story just right, my readers would never have to know how dumb and shitty I was. I would never have to know how dumb and shitty I was.

You may think you-as-you-are has no business writing. You might prefer never to write again than to let you-as-you-are write anything with your name on it. But you have to. I rarely say you “have to” do anything on this blog, but I am telling you now: you cannot move forward if you do not let that ugly, pathetic, shameful, secret version of yourself out onto the page. You cannot write anything good if you hide the person you dread you are.

You’ve gotta leave the house without your intellectual makeup on. Otherwise, you’ll believe forever that you’re hideous without it.

I can hear you objecting: you are special, which is to say especially bad, and if I knew you, the real you, I’d admit that yes, you should hide the real you. Well, guess what – your fear and self-disgust and belief that the real you has nothing to offer is not unique. Thousands, millions have preceded you, and all of them probably thought their awfulness was unique in the history of mankind too. If you’d be willing to tell them it’s okay to write without changing who they are, then you have to let yourself do the same.

I’m telling you that now. It’s okay. And it’s necessary if you’re going to write at all, to say nothing of writing well. This is the paradox: to write well, you have to hand the reins over to the version of yourself you believe is least capable of writing well.

It’s wild, actually. When you take off the mask, your writing gets more powerful. Less pretty, maybe, but more real. We are all worms crawling on the surface of a rock. When you let yourself speak as the worm, truth comes out. Writing is like love: you can’t do it if you pretend to be someone else. Even if you believe the real you is unlovable.

This isn’t about “write a shitty first draft and improve it later.” This is about letting go of shame. Do you sit in front of your computer, afraid to touch the keyboard lest the worst shit imaginable spill out and the whole world (and you) learn how stupid and talentless you are? Good. Let that shit out. Let the worst-case scenario come to pass. That is the most heroic thing you can do. If you do this – if you write the boring, stupid, hacky shit you’ve always feared you’d write – you’ve achieved something. If you can’t bring yourself to do it, tell yourself, “Well, Wrex told me to do it, so I have to.” You have my permission – nay, my command – to write the bad story you secretly believe is the only story you can write.

But Wrex, you say, I’m already doing that. Yeah, maybe, but right now, you think that’s a bad thing. You’re not doing it intentionally, and you’re doing it despite tremendous effort to do otherwise. I’m telling you to do it intentionally and to celebrate it. To be proud of it. To do it without shame. Don’t labor, don’t try, don’t think, just let that uncensored filth spill out. Then you will know that the worst can happen and you’ll still be alive. 

No matter how much you may hate what you wrote, you have acted with incredible dignity simply by being honest with yourself. Very few writers can say that – writers you might think are really talented. Sure, they can write words that entertain and dazzle people, but if you have faced what you hated most about yourself and let it out into the light, you have done something they were too afraid to do. And if you gave these allegedly shit-smeared pages to me, I could point out the value in what just looks like garbage to you.

Do it. Whatever happens, it’ll be better than where you’re at now.