“Having a low opinion of yourself is not ‘modesty.’ It’s self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not ‘egotism.’ It’s a necessary precondition to happiness and success.”
—BOBBE SOMMER, FROM PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS WITH THE MAXWELL MALTZ FOUNDATION
I wish I could say that everyone you’ll meet along your path will wish you well and want the best for your writing practice. I wish, also, that I could say you will always make choices for your highest good, take all opportunities, and make only forward steps, but, hey, we’re all human.
As you travel your road, you’ll encounter people who don’t have your best interests at heart. And, at times, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty will cause you to turn down, turn away from, or even sabotage chances to do great things.
The good news is, in both cases, you can arm yourself with knowledge to fend it off, try again, and practice good habits that will assure you as clear and upward-moving a path as possible. A solid writing practice is flexible and resilient. It will survive all attempts at sabotage.
Those who make a concerted effort to sabotage your success are most likely quite unhappy and unfulfilled, or feeling stuck in their own creative lives. Your talent and success, therefore, may represent a sign to them of where they want to be or where they should be but aren’t yet. And rather than behaving like adults and working on their own writing practice, they turn to childish behaviors that, in the long run, don’t do anyone any good.
Others may feel threatened by your success even if they already have achieved a measure of it, because they do not trust their own practice. But it’s not your job to assuage other people’s fears by holding yourself back.
I have a wonderful writing colleague, already many times published herself, who decided to experiment in writing romance fiction and to self-publish it. Romance is a genre, she reasoned, that sells itself without much need for author platform. She did her research, chose a subgenre to emulate, then studied it, deconstructed it, and wrote her own version of a romance story. She did exactly what the advice books tell you to do. One of the successful authors in the subgenre, despite at first offering friendly advice, felt threatened when she saw my friend’s book becoming successful. And she behaved badly: She bad-mouthed my friend in public forums and drummed up animosity.
And guess what? This negative energy did very little to harm my friend’s actual book sales (though it did make her feel bad for a while). But it made the other person look petty, jealous, and mean. It made the person appear to be stingy and greedy, as if the romantic fiction market were hers alone to write in. It looked bad for her, not for my friend.
Of course, it still stung my friend, but with the support of her Creative Support Team, she regained her confidence and moved on.
The most important strategy for dealing with sabotage is to take the path of least resistance. In most cases, the less you do the better. Saboteurs want reactions. They want to know they’ve gotten under your skin and riled you. The truth is, if you’re walking a path of integrity and doing your own thing, in the long run there’s very little that an act of sabotage can do to you.
Forms of sabotage include when others:
In the cases above, remember the following.
In this digital age, in which anonymous people can leave nasty comments and reviews, and rally others to join in, a line exists which, once crossed, can transform negative feedback into bullying. Bullying, by definition, is when someone personally attacks you in an aggressive attempt to cause you, your work, your reputation, or your sources of income harm. When commentary goes beyond the work and is aimed in a threatening manner at you directly, attacking your character, your talent, your nature, or anything of the sort, it is no longer criticism—it’s bullying.
Several cases have been widely reported in which authors have experienced bullying via Goodreads or Amazon reviews, or in online forums. Bullying is no joke, and it hurts just as much as it does when it’s in person. It takes on an even more egregious quality when it threatens to affect your livelihood or professional reputation.
Here are some strategies to put in place should you encounter bullying.
A negative opinion might sound like, “This story really didn’t excite me. It wasn’t what I expected. I wish the characters had been better developed.” In contrast, a bullying comment might sound like, “What idiot wrote this tripe? If you keep publishing this dreck I’m going to tell all my friends not to buy it.” The latter is personal, threatening, and uncalled for.
It’s often much easier for writers to pinpoint sabotage coming from others; when they sabotage themselves it may be harder to see or acknowledge.
I once took classes from a writer I admired with all my being. She was not yet well known (she taught her workshops out of the living room of her little cottage), but she was personable, authentic, and immensely talented. The snippets of her work that she read were outrageously good. One day, after an intensive, all-day writing workshop, she told us that the editor of a well-respected literary journal had invited her to send her next set of finished short stories. The editor was going to personally put them ahead of the slush pile and read them all, because my teacher was that talented.
With a wry smile, my teacher wrinkled her nose and said, “I don’t know why I haven’t done it yet.”
I didn’t know either, and it would be many years before I realized that for whatever reasons, my teacher was afraid. Despite having the admiration of a respected editor, she didn’t believe her work was good enough. She preferred to teach others rather than pursue her own success. I believe that she was able to come right up on the edge of success but was terrified to cross over and face rejection.
Tragically this teacher of mine died at the terribly young age of fifty-one from aggressive cancer and never got the chance to submit her stories. I’ve always taken it as a lesson: Don’t sabotage yourself, because you don’t know how long you have. How wonderful it would have been for my teacher to have seen her words in print in her favorite literary magazines before her death.
Being a self-saboteur doesn’t make you bad; it suggests that fear or anxiety is holding you back. And I have great empathy for that state, having sabotaged myself a time or ten, too.
In addition to giving in to fear, other forms of self-sabotage include:
If you’re engaged in self-sabotage I guarantee it’s for one of the many reasons this book addresses: fear of failure, fear of being a fraud, fear of the responsibility of being successful, or fear of being seen. As Frank Herbert writes in his novel Dune, “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.” It really is.
So what should you do when you feel yourself pulling back and away from success or rushing in too fast before you’re ready, which both have the same effect?
Take an honest look at your writing career and ask yourself if a figure of sabotage is at work in your own life. Make two lists.
List 1: Write your top three writing goals or top three desires—whichever appeals to you more.
Here’s an example.
List 2: Beside each item, list your top fear for why you have either held back from pursuing your goal or desire, or have sabotaged it.
Realize that your fears are usually anxieties that can be solved with a more minor step or action. From the example, for instance, if you don’t know how to write a query letter, several books, websites, and classes can teach you this skill in a heartbeat. Don’t have an agent? Once you master that query, hundreds of agents are out there waiting for you to submit your work. And so on.
Break your bigger fear down into manageable bites and steps until you land on the step that you feel you can do. When you try to take on the biggest step that touches on an even bigger fear, chances are it will lead to sabotage.
Saboteurs, both internal and external, want your silence and your complicity. When you’re feeling the effects of sabotage or bullying, it’s time to make some noise. In this chapter you’re going to exercise your vocal chords.
I recommend you go to a place where you can be alone. Do one of the following: Shout at the top of your lungs or into a pillow as long as you comfortably can, or—my personal favorite—put on a favorite song and sing as loudly and as passionately as you can. Bellow the song at the top of your lungs; really put your whole body into it.