“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”
—MAY SARTON
You read a lot about “author platform” and “branding” these days. This chapter is about shaping the root of those things—developing your distinguishing, singular imprint on the world as manifested in your writing. In other words, what makes you bold, memorable, fresh?
I’ll bet if you were asked to think of “bold” writers, several names would come to mind. They may be boundary-pushing visionaries who say whatever they think. Or they may just be people who write a straightforward, honest truth. They may write things that “average” people don’t or that you never thought one could write about. Why you consider them to be bold is indicative of your comfort level with expression. For some people the word bold is negative, but I’m using it here to convey a kind of bravery and honesty in your writing. Off the top of my head, I can think of some bold writers from a variety of genres: Toni Morrison, Lena Dunham, Chuck Palahniuk … writers whose voices are unforgettably unique, brave, and definitely bold.
One of the most intriguing hallmarks of bold writers is that they don’t apologize for themselves. And nor should you. Don’t apologize for the space you take up, your opinions, your perspective, where you come from, or any of your experiences. Writing is a bold act—a declaration of having something to say. While even the boldest writers tremble from time to time after sending something out into the world (in fact, I’d venture, most writers do), they do it anyway and stand behind their work. Being bold is about giving yourself permission to tell and share your stories. And yes, people will criticize, judge, and occasionally get angry at what you’ve written. Your job is to stand in your truth with courage. The haters and naysayers can write their own stories.
Now, not apologizing for yourself does not give you permission to behave cruelly, to wield your boldness like a weapon against others. It doesn’t mean you should use your work to write badly about others just because you can. If anything, the boldest, most exposing writing is that which is also compassionate. Bold writing is vulnerable writing.
Boldness may seem to be about toughness on the exterior, but it goes hand in hand with vulnerability and transparency. The “tough” writer is one who has all the same fears as the rest of us but writes what she wants anyway. Being bold is being you but with the veil removed, your edges exposed, and your seams showing. Great writing is not perfect; it’s real. It bleeds and leaves a trace.
How vulnerable are you willing to be in your writing? Do you include your real feelings, your personal life? Do you write about emotions you know intimately? In your fiction do you tackle subjects close or foreign to you? Do you find yourself staying in a comfort zone of certain themes or messages out of a fear of saying more? When you experience a shivery little feeling of being “too bold,” or bolder than usual, it often results in a pretty spectacular experience for both you and your audience. Readers feel that authentic, vulnerable energy; they know you’re giving them something deep and honest. Being bold cements trust with your readers and gives them permission to be so bold, too.
Boldness is also about claiming the identity of Writer (the capital W is intentional!) and adding it to the top of the other roles you carry rather than relegating it to the side. For many writers, the moment you said to a friend or an audience, “I am a writer,” is usually a memorable one, almost a rite of passage or transition. Instead of just “a person who writes” or “dabbles” in writing, you gain power in standing up and asserting that you are not just a hobbyist but a writer for the long haul. A practitioner, if you will.
The reason I call it a writing practice instead of a career is that career connotes success only in the instance of money or a particular product. But yours is a writing practice no matter what stage you’re at, and you have every right (and I strongly encourage you) to claim your writing as important, powerful work even if you’ve never published a thing. The only requirement of being a writer with a writing practice is that you keep writing.
Boldness is also part of the process in learning to tune out the critical voices of others, those forces in league with inertia that want to pull you down and away from your own greatness.
No one likes to receive negative comments from others, but the most negative force on your own self-esteem, and thus your bold writing practice, is your own negativity. Read the following sentence, for example.
Your writing is magnificent. I was really moved by your words. You have such a talent for expressing yourself.
What are the first words you hear in your head when you read those words? Do you hear yourself demur, Oh, not really, or But you should read my friend X’s words, or something equally self-deprecating? Or maybe you feel a surge of pride but follow it up by scolding yourself: Who do you think you are? Don’t boast. Aren’t you bold! Those are just a few of the common voices that can be found running on a critical loop in writers’ minds. Whether you were raised to be humble to the point of never speaking of your own talents or you’re afraid of coming off as “arrogant,” you might have a tendency to squash your capacity or dim your brightness, especially if others find it threatening or competitive, or simply don’t know how to properly support you. We’ll talk in chapter eighteen, “Alleviate Envy,” about how sometimes other people’s suppressed longing can become misdirected into envy.
You’ve made strides toward the authenticity that is already yours; that’s the first step. But a writing practice is, in many ways, a bold enterprise. Anytime you put thoughts into words is a bold step. You’re making form out of idea, concretizing something ethereal, and thus, in your own way, saying: I matter. My words matter.
Being bold also means claiming your voice as your own rather than attempting to mimic others’. It means not censoring yourself (at least in the act of drafting—you can revise as needed later), putting your work and yourself in front of an audience, and speaking of yourself honestly, positively, and with conviction.
It took me many years of receiving compliments to learn that a compliment giver hates nothing more than receiving a self-deprecating reply. In a way, deferring your talent or impact is a form of refusing the compliment and thus denying the opinion of the compliment giver as well as giving yourself a backhanded insult. Self-deprecation is a symptom of not giving yourself credit or taking your writing seriously. Sometimes it’s a fear of coming off as having a big ego or seeming boastful. The reasons may be manifold, but the behavior looks the same to the compliment giver and it has the effect of disconnecting the reader, listener, or viewer from the message you’re seeking to communicate rather than connecting.
Writing is connecting; even rants, manifestos, and diatribes are attempts to connect. We write and speak to reach and move others, to seek approval, to feel less alone, to incite a discussion, to learn new information, to strike up wonder and awe, and many other reasons. And each stage of connection requires a new level of boldness. It takes one kind of boldness to write in the first place and another kind to share your work, seek feedback, or submit to journals, agents, and publishers.
One of the greatest challenges of my own adventures in education came in my final semester of earning my masters in creative writing. To graduate, I had to give a lecture to the entire student body, faculty, and visiting writers—several hundred people, including some of my literary idols. I spent a lot of time watching other near-graduates, as well as seasoned authors, give their lectures along the way, and I took notes. This is what I came to: When the lecturer communicated his subject as though it was truth—that is, he made eye contact, spoke with authority, moved right past any stumbles or flubs, and stood straight—the lecture, no matter the subject, had an impact on me, stuck in my memory, and left me feeling I’d learned something. In other words, it was the assertiveness, boldness, and confidence of the lecturer that sold me the lecture. I think a similar kind of assertiveness is communicated via your words to readers when you dare to be bold.
I can’t say enough about the “fake it until you make it” approach to building your boldness. Sometimes you have to pretend you feel highly about yourself and your work before you actually feel that way.
Here’s the hard truth: Agents, publishers, and readers don’t want to know that you don’t think you’re talented, experienced, polished, or capable enough. They want to believe in you. They want to fall into the “dream” you’re selling in words. They want to be seduced.
So much of marketing is about framing and staging information and imagery in a way that appeals to audiences. You will be required to exercise boldness at many stages in your writing practice, even when you’re not feeling so bold. Here are a few tips for faking your own boldness until it comes naturally.
Part of boldness is mustering courage. And before you say that you’re not courageous, remember what courage is: It’s the ability to rally strength, confidence, certainty, and faith when you don’t necessarily feel it. In other words, it’s making strength out of a sense of weakness. Or, as I say to my six-year-old son, “Courage is when you’re scared but you do the thing you’re afraid of anyway.” It’s choosing to be bold when it would be easier not to. And the avenue to finding that courage is in exposing yourself and looking within. As Brenè Brown says, “Vulnerability is the most accurate measurement of courage.”
Even if you’re not feeling it right now, you probably know what kind of writing you can produce when you’re at your best, and you have at least a sense of what your writing reads like when you’ve penned something stellar. So if you need to pitch yourself or describe yourself or your work, describe the best version of you or the work and yourself. Then you’re also more likely to hold yourself to that standard.
Still struggling to access your boldness? Trade pitches with a writing friend. Ask someone who knows and likes you and your writing to write about you or your project in glowing terms. See how someone else would describe you or your work. Borrow from that.
Okay, it’s time to determine your level of boldness with a set of questions. When you determine what your comfort levels are, you know what “boldness” means to you. Boldness is taking steps outside of your comfort zone. You don’t have to take huge, risky steps; you can start with small ones (and we’ll talk more about those in chapter thirteen, “Stretch Your Skills,”), but first we start with identifying your current comfort zone.
Answer the following questions with a yes or no. Are you comfortable …
The number of times you answered yes or no will give you a snapshot of your comfort with “boldness.” It’s not a road map yet—that is coming in chapter thirteen. But it’s a first step, a personal inventory that you’ll work with.
A couple of years back, I participated in my first flash mob, where a bunch of people spontaneously danced to a song in the middle of a downtown Fourth of July festival. When our song came on, thirty of us parted the dense crowd and danced to a number we’d practiced. It was terrifying. And euphoric. People joined in. Strangers clapped. We wound up featured in the local newspaper. Fear transformed into confidence, and I realized that the worst thing that happens when you put yourself out there is that you might feel a little embarrassed, but you also might have some fun.
In lieu of something as dramatic as flash mobbing, consider taking an exercise or dance class that you’d normally never try. My massage therapist recently told me she has taken up drumming—she’s learning the Japanese art of taiko, which is a physical and social form of drumming, something she’d always mistakenly believed to be a masculine form because it’s related to martial arts. Now she has a new attitude. She says the practice is so energizing she can use drumming in place of coffee or chocolate when she needs an energy boost!
Or maybe you’ve always wanted to surf or ski or swim, but you lacked the confidence necessary to sign up for that first lesson. When you limit your movements, you limit awareness of yourself, which is crucial to understanding yourself as a writer, too. How you move and hold and carry yourself has a lot to do with your experiences. The more you know about you, the more you can translate that onto the page.