The Fear of Your Writing Being Misunderstood and Attracting Negativity

"Instead of just writing how I feel I start thinking about how an imagined reader might perceive my words and potentially misunderstand."

This is a piece inspired by my thoughts on creative confidence and the fear of being seen by a bigger audience, that I originally posted on my blog last year. It was mentioned by

Anna Schroeder

on her Substack

Writing Rampant

a few days ago and so I thought I’d share it here.

When I wrote the blog post I was just starting to write on the Medium platform at the time and was utterly terrified. There were lots of reasons for this: Medium was a place for ‘proper’ writers, someone might say - you don’t belong here, Helen!, or I might go viral on there and inadvertently offend someone with my writing because one post was taken out of context with other posts I’d written. (Amie McNee discovered this when one of her Instagram posts went viral recently and people who hadn’t come across her work, her ethos and personality before took offence at something she wrote - sad, I know, but these people are out there).

Anna writes in her own Substack post called Don’t Dilute Yourself:

I don’t know if it’s because my gender, my generation, or my social upbringing, but being ‘offensive’ is one of the worst social missteps. What if I offend someone with my writing? What if I’m unknowingly perpetuating stereotypes? What if someone is hurt because of the way I write, or the content of my work, or anything else I say or do?

Many of us are constantly diluting ourselves with our writing or creativity. Whether this is because we fear success or failure, whether this is because we feel ‘who am I to be writing about that?’ or because we fear offending someone despite our intentions being completely non-offensive.

Social media has amplified ‘cancel culture’ and it is entirely possible that creative success may bring negativity into your inbox. Trolls using offensive language can really knock you sideways (as I found out when one of my chickens died and someone was angry with me because I wasn’t upset enough online). It’s like a physical assault: embarrassment and shame course through me when it happens, my knees shake and my face goes red. I’ve upset someone so much online that they swear at me and this is just utterly distressing.

I’m a bit more hardened now and thankfully troll comments are rare. But I still look at my YouTube comments with a little trepidation each time. And no longer allow comments on my blog.

Here’s the original post, originally published on March 21st 2022.

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The Fear of Being Misunderstood with Your Writing or Creativity

I think many of us have The Fear when it comes to writing. It could be anything: an Instagram caption, a blog post, a book or a newsletter. I’ve been writing online in various guises for fifteen years and have got past that feeling of hiding under my desk every time I publish a blog post or Instagram caption (although, admittedly, that did take me some time). But doing something new, something slightly out of my comfort zone like when I started my newsletter and, just this week I’m going to start writing for Medium, brings those fears and insecurities flooding back. 

Instead of just writing how I feel I start thinking about how an imagined reader might perceive my words and potentially misunderstand. I scrutinise each sentence to make sure it says what I want it to say.

My fear of being misunderstood actually comes from real-life events.

In January 2020 within a few days of each other, I received two horrible messages on Instagram. One was left on my latest photograph and the second, by a different person (though who am I to know - it may have been the same person) came as a direct message. The first message - and I can’t remember it verbatim as I deleted it and the screenshot I took of it - said my photographs were vain and shallow and therefore I was vain and shallow, that I wasn’t a proper writer and was just messing about with Microsoft Word and coffee.

The second, the direct message, was a person who was angry with me for talking about my Instagram followers and how I’d managed to stop the decline and started to gain a following again. She basically said I was a whiner and was pathetic, sad and desperate for validation.

I stared at both these messages for some time.

Yes, with shaky legs and a churning tummy.

Trying to understand what I had done to attract such vitriol. I’ve made them sound fairly tame here but the actual messages made prolific use of the f-word and had much in the way of aggressiveness. I’m no prude, my language in real life can be colourful but the aggressiveness was what hit me so hard in the stomach.

I felt misunderstood. I wasn’t ‘whining’ about losing Instagram followers. Far from it. I was, in fact, sharing my journey because I thought this might help or inspire others in the online community.

And I wasn’t just ‘messing about with Microsoft Word and coffee’. (I use Scrivener for a start!) I was showing up and sharing my work online and making the usual mess of printed paper on a desk look a bit prettier and photogenic - because that was part of my creativity. A warm-up, if you like, before the main event of writing.

The message on my public feed I deleted straight away and blocked him. The direct message I actually thought about, composed a reply and sent it. But then I had second thoughts, deleted my reply and just blocked her. 

Sadly this isn’t the first time I’ve received a message like this. I received one on my blog a number of years previous calling me ‘fat and pathetic’ and not upset enough about the fact my chicken had just died! I was upset about my chicken dying, but when you have fifty or sixty of those little critters over seven years, you get a little hardened to them passing. Again, what bothered me then was being misunderstood. I was sharing little snapshots of thoughts, ideas and creativity. And someone reads one of two words the way they weren’t intended - or inserts their own thoughts into your words - and bam you get the full force of their wrath.

Blocking is the best way forward with these things. That’s what we’re taught. Block, ignore and move on.

It’s good advice but what do we do with the emotions continuing to whirl around in our heads? We’re left bruised and mentally composing replies we could have said and, get this, trying to justify our work to someone who, quite frankly, will never appreciate it whatever we do.

I wanted to shout and argue and reason, basically do all the things I’d do in real life if, say, my husband had misunderstood something I said. But you can’t do that online. Or you could but you’d make the situation worse and probably end up harming your image.

So we block, stay silent whilst going through emotionally draining turmoil and move on. Maybe we open the app with more caution in the future, maybe modify our creative behaviour a bit because we feel self-conscious. 

Maybe dilute our online selves a little bit.

And this is the bit that frustrates me. Actually, it angers me. Because it had taken me years to work up to the point of sharing my writing online. Of being vulnerable to strangers. And you get casual comments from keyboard warriors that knock you straight back to the beginning.

It’s like the game Snakes and Ladders. You’re moving forward square by square every time you publish some of your writing. Occasionally you get a confidence boost and land on a ladder. But it’s a dicey journey as one roll of the dice and you’re sliding down the snake of no confidence.

When I did my survey into confidence and creativity sixteen percent of people said the main reason why they didn’t put their creativity out there was because of what someone had said or what they thought someone might say. A lot more included it as one of many factors affecting their creative confidence.

It happened to a member of The Confident Creative Club a few weeks ago. And it did to her what it did to me. It stopped her from writing, from posting. It made her adjust how she expressed herself, and what she shared.

Please, don’t stop being creative because of what you think someone might say or what someone has actually said. Incidentally, I’m not talking constructive criticism here. I’m talking about actual trolling.

Don’t not write that blog post because you think someone might message you nasty things. Because there are people out there, with the anonymity of the internet, who dare say things online that they wouldn’t dream of saying to your face. And they get upset over bizarre and seemingly trivial things. Things you cannot anticipate. So don’t dilute your personality for these people, real or imagined. You have to keep going and doing your thing. You’re doing this for you. 

If this ever happens to you lovely people reading this, I also suggest this: Don’t keep it to yourself. By that, I mean to share with a friend, partner, spouse, colleague, Instagram friend or a safe community that you’re part of.

Just don’t let it sit in your head and churn around and eat you up.

I messaged my lovely friend and vented to her. It worked a treat and stopped the thoughts spiralling in my head. The member of the Club I referred to above shared with other members within the Club. The worst thing is when you don’t vent about how that message has made you feel and instead, you convince yourself that they’re right. So you stop writing. You stop creating. 

The thing is, trolls are never right. Real or imagined ones. So don’t dilute your creativity because of fear. Block, vent, journal and then move on. Tiny steps. But positive, firm steps. This is your creative journey. Keep going.