On emasculating ourselves with negative humour

Stand up (or sit down) if you’ve ever made a joke about needing a friend to stand over you with a whip and chair to make you write.

Or about being easily distracted. Even with other stories instead of the one  you’re ‘meant’ to be writing.

Or about procrastination.

Or about being unable to finish.

Or about your work being trash.

Or about your tastes being trash.

Or about being surprised that you’re getting attention for a story in public view. (Or being actually surprised, and showing it.)

Or or or or or or.

Yep. Everyone has. I have too. I don’t anymore.

Writers undercut themselves. Writers make it easy to bring themselves down because by the time someone picks up the axe, half the work is already done — by what we say, and how we joke, and the way we make ourselves feel. Jokes aren’t jokes if they’re the same, every time, and almost without exception at the writer’s own expense. Self-deprecating isn’t self-deprecating if you believe it. Then it’s just self-derogatory. And that isn’t funny.

The words we use are important. The narratives we grow, as a community, determine the attitude of those coming into it.

I don’t spend a lot of time in writing communities. In general, and also lately. I’ve been more annoyed than not the way writers ‘joke’ about how terrible they are, with their discipline and their management and their ability. It strikes me as more performative than real. People with imposter syndrome usually hide that they’re feeling it, for fear someone will find out they’re undeserving; writers put it on display, as if somehow the fact they’re ‘terrible’ at their passion proves they’re really writers. I’ve even seen successful, popular authors do it, like that one smart kid in high school terrified about the A- they got instead of an A.

If you don’t want to be terrible, then don’t act as though you are. If you’re not terrible, then acting as though you are (whether you believe it or not) looks, from the outside, insincere as hell. It’s as though writers expect someone to make a pothole in front of them, so they may as well do it.

No more. No jokes about inability. No thinly-veiled self-recriminations. Stand tall. Don’t flinch. Walk long. Fall. Get on your feet. Don’t stop.

Hold your head high. Don’t bend when those around you act as though they’re less than they are. Stand tall and take pride. Be fierce. Protect your right to have faith in yourself. You don’t need to suffer for your passion. Acting like you’re lesser for the laughs, because everyone else says those things, eventually creates a truth in you that you aren’t capable.

There’s enough people willing to cut your legs out from under you without you helping them. Because if you do, sooner or later you’ll realise that the person most responsible for the potholes is you.