I must confess that this Touchy Topics Tuesday post is being completed early on Wednesday. I guess you could call this Where the Hell Were You Wednesday. Post-long-weekend Tuesdays always feel like Mondays, and also often have the leftover tasks from pre-long-weekend Fridays, and...well, you get the picture.
The topic for this week is self-deprecation: specifically the kind of self-deprecation we use, and abuse, as writers. I'm not talking here about the kind of humility I discsussed in last Tuesday's post. I'm talking about the hundred little verbal jabs we aim at ourselves in conversation when the subject of our writing comes up. "I'll probably never be published." "He's a real writer, not like me." "Everyone else is so well-read, I'm ashamed to say anything." "Published? No, but I do have a bathroom wallpapered in rejection letters."
If you've heard me teach or speak even once, you'll know that I'm no stranger to this kind of comment. Irony about myself and others is hard-wired into my sense of humor, and to that extent it's (perhaps)more or less benign. Yet it's also easy to stray into something more toxic, and I do that as well.
Here's the problem. Every time we aim one of these sharp little verbal arrows at ourselves, we drain a bit of our self-confidence. We tell ourselves that our writing practice isn't valid, that our work isn't worth while, that we don't have the skills or the smarts or the right to take our work seriously. We make a comedy of something that isn't comic, and cast ourselves for the part of the buffoon. It's tempting to say that such innocent little barbs don't mean anything, but I don't believe that's true. Whether uttered from our own mouths or anyone else's, judgments repeated often inevitably begin to have the ring of truth.
And every time we do it, we also drain others. Wordlessly but no less powerfully, we ask them to reassure us, validate us, praise us, prop us up. I don't actually think it's bad to ask for reassurance; I just think we should do it consciously, intentionally, and clearly. Telling someone I trust, in a setting that makes real dialogue possible, that I am struggling with doubt or block can be deeply healing. Telling someone I barely know, in a setting that allows only the briefest and most banal exchanges, that I am not a "real" writer isn't deeply anything. It's just a superficial bit of schtick, a quick soft-shoe shuffle that says hey, don't worry, I'm no threat at all, no sir, not me.
Let's stop reducing ourselves to this kind of minor comic turn. Let's stop disparaging work that has taken hours of struggle and years of soul. Let's start being intentional here. If you can't acknowledge your writing with at least a modicum of pride--and there are many social situations in which that's the case--then don't raise it at all. When you do bring it up, learn to do it in words that honor both you and your writing. For example: "Am I published? Oh, no. I'm still learning the craft, but I'm loving every minute of it." Is that sparkling banter? Nope. But is it thinly disguised self-criticism? Nope, it's not that, either. It's an honest and humble statement...that leaves you and your work unscathed.
When does the temptation to "diss" your writing come up most strongly for you? How do you handle it? If you have a thought, a suggestion, or just a question, leave a comment below. One of the ways to detox conversations with people who don't understand our vulnerability about writing is to engage in dialogue with people who do.
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