Unpacking creative insecurity

Everyone is insecure. Everyone. And people who are insecure can be dicks.

Dear Writer,

I heard recently about a well-known writer who said discouraging things about his own writing students in an essay collection. One of the students in my writing workshop mentioned this comment, and how it had been in their head, discouraging them, for years now.

Huh.

My first response to this idea was, of course, “Fuck that guy.” For a lot of reasons, the first being, How fucking dare you, a massive bestselling, navel-gazing writer whose novels have all committed the same sins you complain about, talk about your students—who came to you with every vulnerability exposed—this way?

My second response was, “Fuck that guy.” Because after doing a search about him, I discovered that his most recent novel was semi-autobiographical… the exact sin of which he accused his students.

Now, the discouraging commentary came from a book of short stories and essays he wrote in the early 90s, and there has been 30 years of space between then and now in which he could have rethought the way he spoke to beginning creatives—which for me is among the gravest of sins for anyone with any success at all. Maybe he has since changed his mind, and regretted the way he spoke about his students. Or maybe he’s the same asshole 30 years later. Who knows?

More importantly… who cares?

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We’ve gotten really caught up in the schadenfreudic pastime of Making People Pay in recent years, but in most cases, it’s not actually helpful. Like, I could name this guy and maybe it would mean one or two fewer book sales for him, presuming that one or two of you might have otherwise purchased one or two of his books, but I’m not interested in punishing him for what he said. It was shitty, sure, but being a shitty person comes with its own drawbacks. He may be sitting on piles of merry cash as a major bestselling author, but if he’s truly an asshole, then that is its own punishment. If he’s just someone who said something phenomenally stupid in the 90s… welcome to the club, dude.

Now, as I say “being a dickhead is its own punishment” the self-righteous lefty scold inside of me is saying, “BUT WHAT ABOUT NAZIS AND WEINSTEINS?”

I would like to say, for the record, that a) most people are decidedly NOT Nazis and Weinsteins and b) yes, by all mean, hold the Nazis and Weinsteins accountable for their behavior under the law.

But in most cases, when we’re talking about People Who Once Said Stupid Shit, there is sufficient room for grace. And I get more out of unpacking the cancerous insecurity that would cause a successful creative to denigrate other, less experienced creatives—his own students—than I do out of banging my fist on the table and calling for his head.

Yes, I said insecurity. This repeated NYT bestselling author whose books have been made into movies and who perches upon piles and piles of glittery coin spoke this way about his students because he was insecure. I make that assertion with full confidence, without personally knowing or ever having met this dude, because the only reason to discourage and dismiss other creatives is if you feel threatened by them.

Success is not a vaccination against insecurity; if anything, most of the time when I’ve seen it up close, even in small doses, it breeds a particular variant of toxic insecurity that results in trying to discourage anyone from coming up after you, lest they boot you from your perch at the top of the dungheap.

Or worse… lest they be actually better than you.

(Which is nonsense; creativity is about creating. It’s a binary value model; either you made something, which is good, or you haven’t made anything yet… which means we’re waiting, get the fuck to it.)

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I take the exact opposite approach from this dude. I believe that every creative act—be it making dinner or growing a tomato in the garden or starting a podcast or writing a novel—is sacred, and that absolutely everyone should be enthusiastically encouraged in that creativity, and encouraged to embrace failure as part of the creative process, the same way failure is encouraged as part of the progress of science.

But that’s not my point here; my point is that anyone who discourages any creative in any way is 100% thinking only about themselves and their insecurities, and any fresh creative (I will not say young because people coming to their creativity are equally vulnerable to this kind of bullshit no matter at what age they are when they encounter it) who hears a hero say stupid shit needs to know that a) it’s stupid shit and b) yes, you can still buy his books if you like him. Being insecure does not make someone a bad writer; if they are good, and they bring you joy, and they are not at Nazi or Weinstein-level of Bad… then go buy the book and stop wasting your energy worrying about it.

People are a mess. All of us. We all say and do stupid things. We all make mistakes. None of us are perfect, and most of us are not Nazis or Weinsteins and hence, there is a space for grace and forgiveness. Yes, fuck this guy, but also… yes, forgive this guy. Learn from his mistakes, and don’t concern yourself with whether he learned from his mistakes or not. That’s his problem; your problem is to not allow his problems to become your problems by allowing him to discourage you.

Do the things you want to do. Create the things you want to create. Don’t let anyone, even your heroes, discourage you. And if there is any voice, even your own, that is telling you that you’re not good enough, turn around to that voice and say, “Good isn’t the point,” and keep doing what you are called to do.

Everything,

L