The Writer’s Fears and How Reviewers Can Materialize Them

When you want to start writing — be it something in particular or just writing in general: maybe you want to become a writer as a life goal, or maybe you just have this thought or idea you want to develop and write about and give to the world.

When you want that, you will find that it isn’t easy. It is not just a matter of having something to say, knowing the language, how to write, and being good at telling a story. It is also about the reactions from your surroundings. About feedback and mentoring, and the fear of negative reviews — keeping you from trying this out, holding you back.

Those People

…they most likely have no idea about what their criticism will do to you, and how easily you can get demotivated by their quick remarks and thoughtless complaints…

Those people, who really should be expected to support you in life and assist you in pursuing your dreams, clearing the road ahead of you from stones, mending your shoes when they break, putting a plaster on your wound when you stumble, or on your blister when you walk too far, encourage your mind when it doubts.

Those people. Your friends, family, colleagues, fellow writers, fellow sufferers of the misery that is the topic of your writing, those with special insight, those who want this story to be told, or, indeed, the very beneficiaries of your journey — your spouse, children, or the people who would really benefit from seeing the world change its mind on a subject; the subject you have chosen to write about.

Maybe you know them as “mentors”, “reviewers”, or “editors”. Or you know them as “friends” or “good colleagues” or “experienced writers who know how to do it”.

No matter what they call themselves, they most likely have no idea about what their criticism will do to you, and how easily you can get demotivated by their quick remarks and thoughtless complaints. Or, perhaps, some of them do have that idea, and they do know exactly how destructive their negative review will be for you — and therefore they do it.

The Belief that Destruction is Improvement

Because, it is a common idea that beating the child will teach it a lesson for life, making it stronger and better at selecting the right options, and doing things right from the start — to avoid getting beaten, probably. Some beating parents, school teachers, or bosses even believe that the beaten child should be forever grateful for being beaten.

…perhaps they are thinking that “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger”…

Many people have taken this way of thinking with them into other aspects of life. Whenever they get the chance, they beat someone, to make that someone stronger. Perhaps they are thinking that “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger”, feeling that they are doing the whole world a favor by killing off such a prospective writer who cannot write well.

Maybe some of them have a more refined way of thinking, a more detailed view of what the damage they do to you is actually good for. They could think of their deed as comparable to making cracks in your carefully crafted pot of clay — which is all new, still fragile, still needing its glazing and hardening.

The Review — Killing the Dream

But you want some thoughts and some input from a trusted person in order to make this beauty you have created so far, become as close to perfect as possible. So you carefully carry it to them, with both hands, making sure that the pot will not get scratched or, the thought itself is almost scaring you to death, fall on the floor and get crushed!

…they do not see your vision … they see only an unfinished and fragile thing, that has no value in their eyes…

Your carefully chosen reviewer for this then takes the pot with a roughness and carelessness that you wouldn’t have been able to imagine, even in your wildest nightmares — and cracks it! They do not see your vision of the perfect pot, that drew you through the work so far, they see only an unfinished and fragile thing, that has no value in their eyes; a useless piece of crap.

And they may then think that if they crack it, they are doing you a favor because you then have to spend time and energy on mending it — and during that process, you may discover many new details and possible improvements that you were not aware of from the start. Until they helped you.

This could happen to you.

This will happen to you.

I am almost certain that

it already did happen to you.

So they destroy your dream on purpose to force you into misery, and from that misery, they expect that you can develop a new and better product, not a dream.

Postscript

The next time they see you or your pot, it will be finished. You will have gone through a lot of work, and a lot of frustrations, to make it look like a pot again, and in the end, you may be happy about the result. But you will, definitely, not seek your evil reviewer’s advice at any time during that process.

…there is, unfortunately, also a risk … that your trusted reviewers end up scaring you away from your dream…

You will know that you managed to do it despite their evil review, not because of it. And they will believe that they made this masterpiece, because, without their invaluable help you would have been happy with less — your ambitions alone were not big enough for doing anything big.

There is, unfortunately, also a risk — a big one, I would say, based on experience — that your trusted reviewers end up scaring you away from your dream, making you believe that you do not have the talent or the strength to go through with it to completion. You will then get back to the flock, no longer sticking out with the hope that you could somehow do something good and noteworthy.

And they will have killed the dream and, in their eyes, saved the world. They will never think back and regret that terrible crime they committed.

What to Learn from This

And this, my dear fellow writer in spe, should make you think twice before you let anyone see your half-finished work for an early review.

Even if they have the best of intentions, they will not see or understand even a fraction of the many thoughts and considerations you have already put into it. They will not see your dreams and visions, they will not understand how being cruel and destructive towards this fragile little baby of yours can actually ruin your life.

May you choose your reviewers wisely and get a magnificent career in writing!

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Title image by ha11ok from Pixabay