How to Battle the ‘Who Would Even Read This?’ Voice

Today I’d like to talk about how to battle the “Who Would Even Read This” Voice. This is a particularly annoying voice for those of us who write personal essays or memoirs, but it does occasionally hound fiction writers as well.

The origin of this voice is usually the fear that we are the only ones. This has been a persistent voice over the years for me, especially as our society has grown more adept at hiding the struggles that we have and pretending like we are perfect people. If we are authentically writing personal essays and memoirs, it will become clear very quickly that we are not actually perfect people. But there don’t seem to be many out there like us (there are).

The origin for fiction writers is a fear of failure, which leads us to a fear that we are writing a terrible book. (And trust me, we’ve all heard it at one time or another.)

I have three scenarios where this voice comes to visit (but there are likely more.)

Scenario 1: When a writer is undertaking the composition of a personal essay or a full-length memoir, which I’ve already mentioned.

We are terribly afraid that what we’re writing is just another notch in the minutiae of the Internet. Everybody has a blog, right? Everybody writes personal essays. Why in the world would someone want to read ours?

Well, if you’re crafting your personal essays and memoirs correctly, the answer is actually a lot of people. We like to read about people who are both different and the same as us. So either way, you’ve got an audience. But the trick is to thread your stories with some truth that could be universal to at least a small group of people. Thread your story with a why or a what was learned form the situation, and it becomes instantly better. Thread your story with emotion—which is universal—and you’ve risen above the minutiae.

To combat the voice in this scenario: Remember that sharing your experience is one of the most valuable things you can do.

In a world where humanity likes to hide the imperfect, those who show themselves to be exactly that (imperfect) will have a huge impact.

Scenario 2: When fiction writers get to the sagging middle of their story—or when they’re wrapping it up.

Sometimes the voice comes to visit because we’ve fallen out of love with the story we started to tell. Sometimes it happens because we’re just having a bad writing day and nothing we put down on paper really makes sense.

I believe it’s important to finish what you start, so when I get to the sagging middle, I try to power through. This is so I can show the voice we talked about last week that I can actually do this and finish something. The story can always be reworked. But a story that’s unfinished will remain unfinished.

To combat the voice in this situation: Give yourself permission to write badly.

Hey, you know what? We’re not going to crank out the perfect words every single day, not even when we’re on the final draft of our book. Some days we’ll write badly. There’s always tomorrow.

[Tweet “We’re not going to crank out the perfect words every single day. Some days we’ll write badly.”]

Scenario 3: Right before you’re going to hit publish.

You could be hitting publish on a blog post or on an entire book. You could be hitting “send” on an email to an editor or an agent. You could be showing your work to anybody in the world, and this voice will creep up behind you and ask its annoying question.

To combat the voice in this situation: Go ahead and hit publish. Go ahead and send it.

The wonderful thing about publishing and sending is that you get better the more you do it. So maybe this query letter isn’t as good as it will be after a few rejections. Maybe that blog post isn’t as perfect as it will be after someone writes a nasty comment. Maybe your book will undergo many different manifestations even after it’s published. The point is to be brave and hit the button anyway. Every time you show the voice that you will win this battle, it will get quieter.

Next week we’ll talk about the “This is Terrible” Voice that is closely related to this voice, so stay tuned for that.

Week’s prompt