We’ve all been there. Sitting at our desks staring at our Word documents, our InDesign templates, our Penzu blurbs, or just a pen and paper waiting for us to write a story only for us to hit a wall and wonder “Will anyone even care?”

While I am a believer of the saying “You shouldn’t care what other people think”, I say that in regards to things like appearance, preferences, music taste, or blanket desires. However, when it comes to art and writing, you don’t really have a choice. If you desire to make money from your craft, that is, enticing strangers who aren’t your friends and family to buy your work, the opinions of others become your career. And you wonder why so many artists are so miserable when a person’s opinion is about as malleable as a clay slab. 

People are impossible to please. Something as personalized as a novel is easy pickings for criticisms and agonizing reviews, or worse, simply apathetic responses. I’ve spent hours in front of my notebooks, my computer screens, my phone screens with over-questioning thoughts of whether or not my stories are good enough or worth the read in this sea of content. Are my story topics engaging enough for people to stay interested? Is my style appealing enough for people to identify with? Do my characters relate to them?

It’s a horrible path to go down once you’ve questioned the very thing you not only love doing, but depend on, spend countless hours perfecting, and work so hard on.

Well, here’s some reasons you shouldn’t let those insecurities keep you down:

Opinions change over time

There once was a time when ‘casual language’ was taboo in literature, once a time when J.K. Rowling used to be regarded as the best thing to ever happen to the book world, once a time when eBooks and Kindles weren’t taken seriously, and the Grammar Gestapo has gone back and forth for decades on the “Oxford Comma”. Grammar rules change, technology changes, the landscape of the world changes, and ultimately opinions change.

Think just two decades ago when marijuana was considered to be a “gateway drug”, being gay was still debated as being “a choice”, 25.0 BMI was considered obese, and privacy was still a virtue. Now, everything’s changed. And that’s normal, that’s life. What’s favorable now could be unfavorable in the future, and vice versa. Can you really hang your hat on people’s flimsy opinions when they can just as easily change their doctrines on a dime? Could you bank on your work achieving success in a future where your genre, messages, and themes are just what the world needs, even if right now that might not be the case? It isn’t so far of a reach to think so. Let chips fall where they may.

You have nothing to prove to anyone

To overcome an insecurity, first you have to acknowledge what insecurities you have, and the feeling that your work “isn’t good enough” is a big one. You have nothing more to prove. You’re not William Faulker, you’re not Jane Austen, you’re not Virginia Woolf, you’re you. That’s all the you you need.

People wouldn’t read it if your style was a copy of someone else’s, (influenced is fine, but come on, you need your own idiosyncrasy) so you need to be honest with your style. Don’t kid anybody into thinking you’re something you’re not. The greatest writers are not born, they are people who face rejection over and over, who copy, proofread, revise, redo, and craft every day until their story is ready for the world.

If your prose is clean and true, and you love what you’ve written, no one can take that away from you. If it’s good enough for you, it is good enough. We can measure ourselves and our work by some impossible benchmark determined by other people’s standards all we can, but we’ll end up in a never-ending cycle of trying to please, or appease, someone else. That isn’t always healthy. It’s okay if you’re writing for no one else’s opinion, respect, or entertainment than yours. I promise, it isn’t a selfish thing to do.

If you stay true to who you are, you can overcome shame, and no one can tell you you’re wrong. It’s your life, and no one else knows it better, so if your story and prose is about what you know, that’s all you need. Authenticity is king in the literary world.

You can be your own hype man

Everyone needs a hype man, no matter how vain it is. It isn’t about boasting or self-glorifying. It’s more like falling in love with the work you create, being a fan of your own characters and getting attached as an audience member would. Re-reading your own work is essential for more reasons than just proofreading and copy, but to sit back and pretend you’re the audience you’re selling to and step out of the “author/God persona”. Pretend you don’t know what’s gonna happen next, so you take each sentence in with new perspective. 

You build up the hype for your own story any time your insecurities start to creep in, so next time you’re in the writing zone again, there’s a fresh new love for the story that will reflect in the writing.

Your work can have a legacy

Everywhere he looked was rejection, and yet he continued to paint, if for no one else’s sake but his alone, or for the sake of people born after him. Now, he’s the most famous painter of his era, and arguably of all time.

Tick, Tick, Boom! is another film about the late Jonathan Larson, who today is considered a musical genius who revolutionized Broadway. His famous musical Rent, where celebrities like Idina Menzel got their start, was featured on Broadway for 15 straight years, but Larson never got to see it, passing away right before its debut.

Works like A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole or The Awakening by Kate Chopin weren’t very well known during the authors’ prime years, but reached incredible heights long after their passing. Emily Dickinson and Franz Kafka lived as recluses for most of their lives, and weren’t even aware of the impacts their work would have. Dune recently received five different Oscars! The critically acclaimed 2021 film adaptation of the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert was among the most watched movies of the year. However, Herbert passed away in 1986, and never got to see what a success his book or its film adaptations would reach.

Now, this topic got morbid quickly, but these creators all believed in creating art for art’s sake, and not the opinions or appeals of others. They made what was true to them, and just what would the world be without Van Gogh, Larson, or Herbert?

You’ll never know if your work, too, could go down in the annals of literary history if you put the pen down today.