Why Mean Words Hurt

Oh hey there. Hiiii! Hi. I know I’m supposed to put a photo at the top of the post so that you all will read the rest. It’s some kind of bloggy science and science never lies, so here you go:

If you’re still reading, it’s because of science.

So, I had a little bit of an epiphany. I’m really really rilly struggling with writing Book Two. See, the problem is this: I love it. I fantastically absolutely love it, and I do not want to let it go. I know there are lots and lots of problems with it (mainly that the plot is a little plotless right now), so the best thing to do would be to send it to my beta readers and my editor and have them help me, piling their wisdom and love on it so I can make it better.

But instead I’m tinkering. Because what if I suck? What if they hate it? It’s so different from what I’ve written before, and also, it’s so ME. It’s every fiber of me. And what if it turns out I was copying someone else and I can’t really write and I’m just a copycat and everything that I thought was so precious about ME was actually something precious about someone ELSE and GEEZ.

I have a few hang-ups about letting this book go, is what I’m saying. And here is the truth: what if every mean word people have said about me was true?

A little voice in my head says, “Mean words only hurt when you let yourself believe them.”

It’s not the other people saying the words, because when people say things to me that are patently untrue (“You’re a boring dresser,” or “You don’t read enough,” or “You definitely don’t love your family,”) they bounce right off me.

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

Oh, sorry, I was playing Ping Pong. Where were we?

Oh yes, when people say mean things that I could never believe about myself, I don’t feel it. When people say mean things about me and they hit my soft and fleshy middle, full of insecurities, I bend over in pain and anxiety and self-hatred.

Yeah, mean people suck, but I suck more for believing them.

So I don’t want to let my book go. Not because I think any of the people who will read it will be mean to me, but because once I move on to the next step, and the next, it’s going to have to be out there in the wide wild world, where just ANYONE can read it and judge it.

And what if they hit my soft and fleshy middle?

I’m working on getting some abs of steel. But only metaphorically. I need to eat a lot of ice cream to get metaphorical abs of steel.

If you have any hot tips to increasing self-esteem and building metaphorical abs of steel, hashtag them on twitter with #hottips but I won’t see them because I’ll be eating ice cream and playing Ping Pong.