Walking Down the Street Naked

Why I've been afraid to share my writing and what to do about it

A few weeks ago I listened to an interview with Neil Gaiman, a prolific British author who has no problem pontificating on his process and use of fountain pens. He said:

The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself… that is the moment you might be starting to get it right.

I knew it was true when I heard it, and yet I also knew that it frightened me. Am I willing to walk down the street naked? I’m a reserved and private person. I wear plain clothing so as not to stand out, but am comfortable being on stage, in the spotlight, or in the lead.

The key for me is control. Maybe I would run down the street naked if I could control how far away people are, the time of day, or how dimly lit said street is. When I write I can control whatever I want. But Gaiman’s point is not the fact of nakedness, but rather the act of vulnerability. Am I willing to be vulnerable in ways I can’t predict? Am I willing to be exposed and to relinquish control of how that will be received?

In 2014, the answer was no. Or at least, the answer was no, it’s not worth it. I attended a Writers’ Guild of Alberta convention in Calgary. One of the workshops was led by Steven Galloway, Canadian author of The Cellist of Sarajevo, a 2008 international bestselling novel. He was quite blunt about making a career as a creative writer: “only eight or nine people in Canada can make a full-time living just from writing fiction. And I am not one of them.”

That was a turning point for me. I had just decided a few months earlier to make a serious go of it as a creative writer. Galloway’s comment didn’t necessarily make me think I couldn’t. It made me think it wasn’t worth it. How many years would I spend toiling as a hobbyist while doing other work, scaling the walls of craft and reputation, with no promise of success? And to do this in competition with seemingly the entire world (everyone and their dog wants to be a writer) during a time when the novel is declared dead and reading is a pastime for the shrinking few?

So I gave up. I almost immediately transitioned to working on the political side of government and then pivoted to a career as a communications consultant, copywriter and podcaster, which is how I make my living now. The work is well-paid and I get to organize myself and work remotely and independently. But I’ve never been able to shake the desire to write my own stuff.

Am I willing to walk down the street naked this time? Put in such a way, I shudder. But maybe it’s better not to dwell on the fear and doubt. Maybe it’s better to try to forget that I am naked and exposed at all, and to walk down the street because I just want to get out and go somewhere.

Maybe it’s better to write and share. So here we go.

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This Newsletter

In some ways my fear of sharing my work is a cliché: I don’t want to be judged, so I don’t expose myself for judgement. I’d rather not try at all than try and fail. And, if I don’t share my work, people will be free to make wild assumptions about it. Like Schrödinger’s cat, my unread writing is both good and bad, terrible and wonderful, at the same time. The promise of what I will write is, in some ways, a safer bet than the reality of what I have written.

This has never been tenable for me because it is a philosophy of not sharing, and this eventually becomes not writing. Why write another notebook destined for the dusty bookshelf? Why put together another literary gift for the void? I am not a sufficient audience for myself.

The purpose of this newsletter is to build a regular practice of sharing my work. I’m sure I’ll talk again about writing, but that can be an exhaustive and unhelpful topic. I’ve got a lot of other stuff I’d like to say: poems, book reviews, travel writing, short fiction, scraps of memoir. I don’t yet know what will come through here. All I can give you now is a warning: there may be nudity. But don’t remind me of that.

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Writing

• One poem (“Keep the Plastic On”, 2017) revised and submitted

• Four pages written longhand

• The first draft of a poem for the Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest, due this coming Monday. Here we go 5am weekend writing time!

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Reading and Listening

• I recently finished listening to the audiobook of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs (2011). Might write about it here as early as next week.

• Listening to the audiobook of Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood (2016), a fun, short memoir with some downright shocking truths about South Africa during and after apartheid.

• Nearly finished ploughing my way through at least a year’s paper backlog of The Economist and The New Yorker. The magazines apparently started to accumulate in drawers in May 2021: the month my son was born. Makes sense! Mostly just flipped through but found a gem here or there. Now when a new magazine arrives in the mail, I get excited like I’m supposed to.

• Shoved in my backpack for months now has been Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird (1994). I actually enjoy and am inspired by reading this book—maybe that’s why it’s taking me so long to finish: I want to preserve the bursts of insight for when I’m stuck. But there is insight everywhere. Time to finish it.

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Quote of the Week

“Potential has a shelf life.”

― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye