Writer's dilemma #1: Sharing your words

Why it is difficult, yet important to share your writing

My writing desk in Paris.

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Back when I was at boarding school, I remember considering this popular question with my other philosophy classmates while we waited for our teacher to arrive. I was sure that it did. We argued over this, delivering our opinions in the firm, raised tone we had all mastered, until our teacher finally came in and moved us on to Kant, or Hobbes. 

I’ve reflected on this question at different points in my life, especially when I think of what it means to be a writer. I have always loved writing. Yet, I went through a long period where I was not sharing my words. (I reflect on my journey and battle to share my words in a more in-depth way in the first piece on this platform, linked here.)

So, I ask myself, if a person writes and no one reads their words, are they a writer? While it is true that some people just write for themselves, I feel that most writers have a desire to be read. As Betsy Lerner wrote in ‘The Forest for the Trees’, “the writer labours in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person.” That is the ultimate goal— to connect.

Yet, I stayed isolated for far too long because I was afraid. In my desire to not feel the shame of having to answer the dreaded question, “so, what have you published?”, I subjected myself to another shame— the shame of trivialising something that was more of a life source than a hobby. Writers know shame and fear it deeply. In ‘Big Magic’, Elizabeth Gilbert lists out many fears of creatives, one of which is that “you’ll be rejected or criticised or ridiculed or misunderstood or —worst of all — ignored.” It is indeed scary to open yourself up to judgement on something you love.

I felt like I had to create quietly till the magical moment when I would get published and be re-introduced to the world as some newly discovered wunderkind. I felt that I could only call myself a writer if there was that kind of external validation — like a stamp on my wrist to enter an exclusive club. As Austin Kleon stated in ‘Show your Work!’, the perception is that “an artist is supposed to toil in secrecy, keeping her ideas and her work under lock and key, waiting until she has a magnificent product to show for herself before she tries to connect with an audience.” But this should not be the case.

There is virtue in sharing your words even if there is no acclaim or sparkling success waiting on the other side (although, hopefully there will be!). By declaring yourself a writer and sharing your words, you take the step to get behind yourself. You liberate yourself from your fears and may even get better at dealing with and learning from criticism. This could lead you to produce better, more confident work — work that could inspire and liberate others. Also, there is accountability that comes with sharing, as you can’t be seen to be a writer without writing. This is why I share now.  As Chinua Achebe wrote in ‘A Man of the People’, a quote that was the anchor of my first inktippeddreams platform in 2012, “the knowledge that I am listened to attentively works in a sort of virtuous cycle to improve the quality of what I say”.

I have grown so much as a writer through the pieces I have shared on these spaces I have created. I have learned to assert myself; deal with feedback (praise can be just as hard to manage as criticism); and be vulnerable. While I have started to have my writing published on literary platforms, I realise that I have so much more to say than can be filtered into those formats. I have been able to connect with people who can relate to or are inspired by my words; and I have built relationships with similarly minded people, all because I put myself out there in this way. Moreover, I have seen how my work has improved. The biggest shift in myself in more recent years is sharing work I intend to publish with trusted readers, in order to get feedback. In Paris, for example, I have been attending a writing workshop where people bring in their work for comments, and it was so scary to hear my words read out loud by others and to sit in a circle while people dissected them. But I realise, through such sharing, that although writing is indeed a solitary thing, there is great benefit to having and creating a community.

In the end, I would change my answer from the one I gave in Philosophy class.  A falling tree has the potential to shake out other branches, to pound the earth, to make birds take flight. But what a shame it is if no one is around to witness it.

Writer’s dilemma is a new vertical I’m adding to my platform, where I will examine, every so often, different aspects that have brought anxiety to my writing journey, which, I think other writers can relate to. I had a piece recently published in Márọkọ́, which can be seen to be the first piece of this series. It looks at how I am affected by time in my writing life. This is linked here.

Prompt:

What part of yourself do you have the most difficulty sharing? Write about it and share it with me (by sending it on instagram, or replying by email if you’re a subscriber) in the next week, and it will go up on the Instagram page.