Shame and the Writer

I don’t know any writer who hasn’t, at some point in their career, struggled with shame.

I remember sending an early novel I wrote to a librarian for critique. I had tried to do something different with the voice of the narrator, giving her an unusual dialect. It wasn’t a dialect based in anything true, any geographical region, including the region my character lived in. I’m not sure why I thought that was a good idea, but in my newbie writer brain, it felt daring and different. The librarian had spent many years on award committees for young adult literature and while she had some good things to say about the novel overall, she also said, “But what in tarnation is this dialect? I don’t understand it at all, and I don’t understand what you’re trying to do with it.” That was all she really had to say. She was right, but it may have killed that novel.

Later, after I had an agent and sold my first novel to Knopf, it was shameful to see sales fail to meet the advance the publisher had paid. And that book didn’t win any awards, another thing to feel ashamed of. The book sold a couple thousand copies, and then I started getting more and more royalties statements with numbers like 11 or 15 copies sold in the previous year. And finally, the book was declared out of print and the publisher reverted rights back to me. That book was my first baby and I still feel shame about how it sold. Or didn’t sell.

• Writers feel shame when their books are rejected by agents, editors, publishers.

• They feel shame when a review is “meh” or negative.

• They feel shame when the sales don’t match their expectations. (And I’m here to tell you, sales almost never meet a writer’s expectations, particularly in the beginning.)

• They feel shame when they realize that another writer is the publisher’s pet, or another book published around the same time as theirs receives more acclaim, or their book fails to get reviews.

• They feel shame when writers in the “cool kids’ club” treat them exactly like what they are: not a member of the “cool kids’ club.”

• They’ll feel shame when other writers have opinions about their books, often opinions that aren’t valid or probably should just be kept to themselves, but it hurts just the same.

In other words, there are a lot of opportunities to feel shame.

You may have met highly egotistical writers in the past, those whose bravado about their own talent makes them somewhat odious and off-putting to everyone they meet. I could be wrong but I suspect their shame is even deeper than what most of us experience, and their boasts are simply a way to mask the deep and pervasive inadequacy they feel every day.

Believe it or not, publishers and editors and publicists also feel shame. Shame that we can’t do more for every book and every author, shame when our efforts meet with little success for a book or author we love, shame that not every book is a smashing success.

I have heard it said that there is a big difference between shame and guilt. Guilt suggests you have done something or failed to do something, and you can rectify it with apologies, renewed efforts, a change in behavior. Shame is a pervasive feeling that has little basis in accountability and isn’t something that we can change through action. It has less to do with something we’ve done and more to do with who we are. Shame is so hard to dispel because it’s a feeling not that we did something wrong that we can fix but that we, the very person that we are, are somehow wrong.

Quick reference note:

• Guilt is based on recognizing you did something or failed to do something that you can rectify or try to rectify.

• Shame is not dispelled so easily because it’s rooted in a belief that we ourselves are the problem, not something we did but who we are at our core selves.

The remedy to shame is truth.

If you’re someone who does shitty things, then you need to learn to feel guilty and change your behavior, end of story. For example, if you’re a writer who participates in truly terrible behavior towards other writers (gossiping, canceling other writers, piling on on social media, being a member of the “mean girls of YA writers crew" etc), then I have no wish to ever know you or publish you or have much to do with you, but I still hope you grow up and change and become a better person.

If you’re not the type of person to do shitty things, then there is no cause to feel shame because your writing hasn’t succeeded in all the ways you wanted it or expected it to.

Remember, guilt vs. shame, and the remedy to both is truth:

If you find at the end of the day that you did not write the best book you are capable of writing—that you cut corners, or failed to push yourself; if you find that you did not listen when people told you there was a problem with the book cover, or you didn’t pay attention to back cover text and metadata; if you find that you put the book out into the world and assumed it would do well without any publicity effort on your part—then there is a remedy to that. Then it is time to say, “It’s not too late.” You can choose to work harder for the next book, or you can go back to the first book and revise it, release it, and publicize it again. There are actions you can take. These are feelings of guilt and you can fix it, if not for this book, then for the next one.

But if at the end of the day, you can truthfully state that you wrote the best book you could at this stage in your writing career, you did your best to make the book marketable and to market the book in collaboration with your publisher, your team, and with your own sweat equity, then what you are feeling is shame. You can release those feelings of shame out into the wilderness, the wilderness that is not where your creative energies live, and tell yourself, “It’s enough.”

You became a writer because you had something you wanted to say, or a story that burned inside of you to come out.

Remind yourself: You’ve done the best you can do. This book, your baby—perhaps your first baby, perhaps your second, perhaps your tenth—is a reflection of hard work, talent, and need. And that’s enough. This book is merely one more point along the journey, a journey that is long and winding and truthfully never has an “end point.” There is never a moment in the journey of the artist where you have reached the “end,” unless literal death is on the horizon or you realize you’ve run out of things to say or stories that burn in your heart to write. In that case, that, too, is sufficient reason to say to yourself, “It is enough. I am enough. This book is enough. The readers it finds, however many or however small, is enough.”

As a publisher, editor, and writer, I meet people all the time who tell me they want to write a book. But they haven’t written a book. You did. Your need to write that book was greater than the need to sell thousands or millions of copies. Your need to write that book was greater than accolades, glowing reviews, or awards. You did it, you put it out into the world, and you can let go of shame.

Writers, we all want to be seen. Invisibility can make you feel worthless. In the last post, I talked about being a good literary citizen, and participating in the community of writers. You do need to be seen, and that starts with seeing others. Start attending the signings of other writers, go to book fairs, join a book club or a writing group, and start seeing others. They’ll see you too, and that feeling of shame will slowly begin to disappear.

P.S.

On a side note, I’m writing this from South Africa. South Africans have a wonderful way of using the word “shame” and taking the sting out of it. They use it to express sympathy or pity, and it’s used as a way to make people feel seen.

Had a flat tire on the road? Did your boss give you a negative review? “Ag, shame, man,” they’ll say, and you’ll feel better about your crap day.

Your child falls down and scrapes their leg while riding a bike? “Shame, my boy, now get out there again.”

See something so lovely that it brings tears to your eyes, e.g., a young mother holding her newborn close to her chest? “Shame,”…while wiping tears away in solidarity, agreeing with the beauty.

Or just something pretty or beautiful or cute? A girl going to her matric ball in a fancy dress? A baby lion? “Ag, shame…”

Maybe the rest of the world can reclaim that word too.