You Have Permission To Write

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• It resonates! Oh, how it does! Thank you, Joanna. Write on!

• Joanna, as a very early-stages wannabe writer, I have to agree - permission is perhaps the hardest thing. As you've said, this includes permission to write the things that I want to write. But, just to add to your list, it also includes permission to take the TIME to write. Sadly, I don't think that constitutes permission not to do the washing up or go shopping: but I have to keep reminding myself that I HAVE decided that I want to write and that means that I HAVE given myself permission to take the time to have a decent go at it.

  • I have found that even giving yourself the time to write doesn't stop the guilt at the things you SHOULD be doing :) You just have to learn to put that aside and put fingers to keyboard ...

• Oh yes, completely agree with this!
  When I started writing and was traditionally published back in the early nineties, I was young and confident and issues of permission did not come into it. I had complete self belief - possibly too much self belief! I just wrote what I wanted, the publisher published it and amazingly asked for more. Five books later, publishing changed and I was out on my ear with my first rejection. Horrible.
  Rejection after rejection then removed my sense of permission, of being able to can-do, and replaced it with a creeping feeling that I must write to please everyone else rather than myself. So I lamely chased the market and trends, to no good effect. And those were rejected and I felt my words drying up because no-one would give me permission to write.
  But publishing our own software (see http://www.writerscafe.co.uk) and seeing people enjoy it and run with it, made me realise that permission to do that cames from us, the creators, rather than the consumers. We didn't need anyone to tell us to do what we did. We just did it. And at the same time the ebook indie publishing revolution came along and I discovered I can now write the books I want (my game pie, love em or hate em early Victorian Northminster Mysteries) and know there is an audience for them. Having giving myself permission to be the writer that I actually am has found me those readers, who are asking for the next one soon please!
  So this all chimes with me. Pick up the pen. Don't wait for someone to allow you to do so. You may fail to make a decent piece of art first time, but you will learn something valuable - that you are allowed to do it, no matter what.

• Hi Joanna,

  Great post that touched a chord with me, particularly as my first post for the recent A-Z Challenge was Action! Stop waiting for permission to start living your life.

  I agree that through sharing your words with others online, you can learn, be inspired and most of all find the confidence to keep going. For me, it has also been a great way to connect with more like-minded people. Good luck on your continuing journey.

• My last book published by a traditional publisher took them a year to publish PLUS they introduced over 30 errors after I had proof read it. Somewhat ironically, I published its sequel 10 months before it came out.

  Last year I wrote and published a 10k word book in just 3 weeks (Kindle and print).

  I haven't got it in for publishers at all but they have some work to do in order to catch up with what is now possible. Evolution to being a 21st century publisher is permissible !!

• I've watched a small part of the change in you, read it in your books, and watched everything you put out keep getting better and better. If we have to dig deep and set loose our characters in our writing, that has to happen with us. It's a struggle, but as always, you lead the way. Very grateful to have you around.

  • Thanks Cyd and I really appreciate your support! Having you and others in the community has helped me progress, and I hope you continue to find the site a useful place for your development too.

• Doesn't it boil down to:

  Traditional Publishing = you write/create within the framework allowed by others.

  Self-Publishing = you write/create based on what you want to do.

• Such an important subject. I know a lot of people who glibly say "oh, you should never self-censor". Almost without exception they are people who have never considered writing anything that would make others even wince, let alone prompt outrage, disgust or, worse, the kind of thing we saw with Salman Rushdie. And whenever people make such glib comments about writers having to have integrity and "what's the problem" it's worth reminding them of Rushdie and the fact that, actually, sometimes saying the thing you *really have to say* isn't just a matter of a writer's gran going "ewww" or worrying your boss will think you're a bit gross - sometimes it can mean a very real threat to your and your family's life.

  I am aware that I self-censor a lot. I agonise constantly over the material I write. I think my observations from those agonisings would be:
  - I once wrote an article on how to choose a piece for a reading when what you write is explicit. It was a guest post for someone who thought I must find it excruciating to read some of the things I do (here's a video of my reading at Literary Death Match http://vimeo.com/16145245 - the piece Last Fluffer in La La Land is what I call "an expansion of the opening sentence of Brett Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero into an account of the last human contact on earth, in the form of a fading male porn star masturbating over the dead body of the last person to work as a fluffer in teh San Fernando Valley's porn industry. I also regularly read a piece I wrote for the transgressive website Games Perverts Play called Meat, which is an imagined dirty phone call between me and my first girlfriend as she bleeds out in the bath). Looking back, I was surprised to find that no, I'd never been the slightest bit embarrassed or uneasy about reading either of these pieces (the judges' reaction at LDM is interesting - there's a video of that too. Two of the judges were deeply uneasy whilst the doyenne of 60s couture and 70s soft porn Molly Parkin loved it). and the reason for that is that there is absolutely nothing about either piece that is contrived or done for shock value. Each comes from the deepest part of me and conveys what I believe to be a fundamental truth I had to tell and does so exactly the way I thought it had to be told. On the other hand, once or twice I have rather lazily written something thinking "ooh, this will shake them up" and the moment I've seen it in print or on the screen I've wanted to scrub the whole thing. So lesson one would be tell what you have to tell in the way you have to tell it. Avoid artifice at all costs
  - I think it's probably fair to say that no great art has ever come about by someone holding part of themselves back. I find myself doing it (from the above, you can probably see why - if that's the kind of stuff I write with no qualms at all, then the stuff I hum and hah about, well...) but when that happens, I'll abandon the project altogether rather than put it out in watered down form. I think the best way to put it would be that to give only a portion of yourself on the page is deeply deceitful to your readers.
  - A story I often recount is being invited to take part in a very prestigious collaboration with a lot of very successful self-publishers who'd all sold six figures worth of books. I was deeply flattered to be asked and very excited. I was asked to contribute my best short story to an anthology to showcase us. I sent The Last Fluffer in La La Land - it's still the best prose I've written by a long way, the only prose I'd be happy to see on a shelf alongside anyone writing today. I got an agonised email back that started in essence "I don't want to censor you but". I think that was the moment it crystallised in my head that I didn't want to be part of the commercial self-publishing scene. Or rather, I couldn't be. I had no choice but to pull out of the project and return to the peripheries. But I've never been happier than I am here. If there's a lesson there, it's to do with how we relate to each other - of course different genres have different expectations, but outside of that, we really shouldn't be censoring each other on content.

  Wonderful article Joanna, and many of those points should be printed out and pasted above all our desks

  • Thanks for the long comment Dan, and you continue to be an inspiration to me around your own creativity. I feel that you are years ahead in terms of writing maturity - but I am getting onto the right path. I feel there is an edge I am exploring and I'm just finding my way along the line.

    I do think self-censorship is important if it will hurt you or your family - there are some stories I won't be writing because they would deeply hurt people I care about. Maybe one day though.

• Well said. Our whole lives we are forced to ask fot permission. No more!

• I've always given myself permission to write. Whether it was short stories or children's texts or just anything that came into my head. What I wasn't able to do until the era of self publishing was get any of my stuff published. And I did try. Hooray for Kindle and the e-book, that's what I say!