Scared of Publishing Your Personal Writing?

How I deal with trolls, bad editors, angry family members, and the temptation to use clickbait-y headlines

This week I’ve been called a streetwalker, a shitty human, a slut, an asshole, and a motherfucker.

This is at the crux of why I only started sharing my personal essays very recently. I was afraid of the backlash that would come with hitting that publish button. Not because I have a big audience, but because there will always be trolls who want to make others miserable.

There may be a few among us who truly don’t care about other people’s opinions but that is not me. And probably not you either, if you’re reading this. Publishing personal work can feel like walking around without our skin. It feels worse than being naked, more like we’re literally spilling our guts. It’s a vulnerable place to be and sucking it up isn’t exactly helpful advice for me.

Here are some things that actually helped me deal with the speed bumps along the way to continue publishing my writing:

1. Dealing with trolls, backlash, and negative comments
2. Beware of using clickbait-y headlines
3. How publishing can be a trap for people-pleasers like me
4. How my desire for exposure led to my first (bad) experience with an editor
5. Talking about myself without being an asshole to other people
6. How I finally started publishing consistently after failing for years, by working with my personality not against it
7. The sweet, sweet rewards I got from getting over my fear of publishing (just kidding, I’m still scared)

This is not advice. These are some notes from my path. Keep what you like and leave the rest.

1. How I deal with trolls, backlash, and negative comments

I try not to take things personally (and sometimes succeed).

Publishing anything will invite criticism (and if there’s no criticism at all, the article is probably too vanilla and not saying much of anything). However, with one of my more controversial articles, I was not really prepared for the backlash and as a recovering people pleaser, it was very hard for me not to want to defend myself to perfect strangers on the internet. I was a bit snarky in some of my comments and tried too hard in others, but I’m giving myself some grace right now.

The last time I had a blog (about leaving the Mormon church), people told me I was possessed by the devil and my ex tried to use my blog posts against me in court. That was fairly traumatic. This is not as bad, but it’s a bit of an echo of the anxiety I experienced before that made me want to hide and retreat into my snail shell. This takes practice and it’s hard and I’m struggling through it right now. But it’s not going to keep me from writing. And I hope the same is true for you.

I make the rules.

If writing on a platform like Medium or Substack, I consider my profile or newsletter my space, my domain. That means I make the rules. I’m not required to let anyone wander in and piss on my carpet. If I have good reason to think someone is a troll who is only there to harass me (they have no profile pic and a nonsense name and no other comments, no content, etc.), I block them. I didn’t force anyone to read my stuff and I will not be forced to put up with miserable keyboard warriors.

I also block people for calling me names (usually) and I would block them for other things I deem inappropriate in my space (like threatening violence, using racist slurs, disrespecting other commenters, etc.).

I engage thoughtfully.

I appreciate readers spending time to engage with my articles and am genuinely interested in their insights. If at all possible, I try to respond to every comment, regardless of whether they’re positive or negative.

In some instances of critical comments, I’ve responded and the ensuing conversation was interesting or helpful. In other instances, not so much, but it’s worth trying in my opinion.

2. Beware of using clickbait-y headlines

The essay I told you about above? The one that got a lot of traction, including quite a bit of extremely negative feedback? One part of that response that I need to own is my use of a slightly hyperbolic title that could be considered clickbait. It was mostly true, but it was an exaggeration, a sort of black and white statement about the very nuanced topic I wrote about in the body of the article.

I often click on the bait, knowing full well whatever I’m going to read is just going to irritate me. Our brains are wired for it, and if you’re trying to make money off your writing by getting eyeballs on your pieces, it is so very tempting to use these tactics.

I did and wish I hadn’t.

You can imagine what happened. Many readers got so pissed off about the title that they made comments without reading the actual content. Those who did read the article were less likely to absorb the substance because my extreme title had set the tone for them. It was a heated topic and I wish I would have been more thoughtful with how I worded the title to invite more understanding, rather than be overly glib about a difficult subject.

I have considered editing the title but decided against it. Part of my publishing practice is accepting that I am a work in progress. I fessed up to the issues with my title in multiple comments and will take this as a lesson going forward.

Worse than the backlash was realizing that I wasted an opportunity to have people consider my words, rather than dismiss them due to starting out with hyperbole.

3. How publishing can be a trap for people-pleasers like me

I read somewhere “Make the art you want to have” and I interpreted this to mean, make the stuff you want to read, see, listen to, not what you think others will want to read, see, listen to. As a (slowly) recovering people pleaser, it is very hard for me to write the words I want to write, the way I want to write them, regarding the topics I am personally interested in, when I know I will publish them for an audience.

On Medium and other platforms, readers can underline passages they find important or meaningful. I initially thought, cool, what a great feature. But then I found myself irritated whenever I saw someone underlining stuff in my essays that wasn’t the most important part of the story in my mind. I kept thinking, that’s not the main point! Didn’t you see that funny joke I made a paragraph earlier? That one sentence that perfectly encapsulates the problem? That section that gets at the core of the issue?

And then people-pleasing me thought: Should I write more of the stuff that people like and comment on?

I was upset that other people didn’t like exactly the same things I liked while simultaneously asking myself if I should just write more of other people’s favorite stuff. Sounds ridiculous when I type it out loud.

I reminded myself that I could write what I liked and that readers could read/underline/comment on what they liked and that it is actually beautiful that other people see different things in my words that matter to them personally, even if I don’t understand why or disagree with it.

4. How my desire for exposure led to my first (bad) experience with an editor

I’ve only been publishing consistently for six months now and so I was obviously flattered when an editor from an online magazine reached out to ask if they could republish one of my articles. I wasn’t sure, because they’re a bit clickbait-y. Okay, a lot clickbait-y. But I thought it would be good exposure, so I said yes. My mistake.

When I looked up the article on the website, it was listed with an incorrect headline I did not approve. The article was supposed to be republished verbatim.

So, I email the editor. I don’t appreciate that you didn’t ask me before changing my headline, so I’m withdrawing permission for the other two essays you wanted to republish. She emails back saying oh no, I would never do this, where are you seeing this? I look up the article again and it’s now my correct headline. I think am I crazy? I email her back that it appears correct now but that I know for sure that it was incorrect earlier that day. At that point I think, oh, I’m such an asshole. I was probably wrong anyway.

But then I remember the Wayback machine, an internet archive that collects screenshot data from websites so you can view older versions before any changes have been made. Sure enough, according to Wayback, the incorrect headline was posted for three and a half days, then changed right after I pointed out the problem.

Instead of coming clean, she then gives me some half-baked story about an intern uploading the incorrect headline and publishing it without her approval. She throws in something about how her word means everything to her in the publishing world.

Bottom line: She changed my title without permission, didn’t fix it until I pointed out the problem, then told me it was never incorrect to begin with (making me feel crazy). When I called her out on it, she told me another lie about what happened instead of owning up. She then stopped responding to me altogether.

The moral of the story? I should have gone with my gut instead of my desire for exposure.

5. Talking about myself without being an asshole to other people

Since I write mostly personal essays, the question often comes up — what about your family and friends? Don’t they hate being written about without their consent? What about privacy? This is touchy, of course, so I’m following a few rules:

Using people’s real names

If I use anyone’s real name, it means they have given express permission and they have seen the essay. If I write stories that include people from my past who I’m no longer in contact with, I use fake names and omit or change identifying details. I use generic terms like “relative” or “friend” or “colleague” instead of specifying my exact familial or personal relationship to the individual.

What about dead people?

I don’t worry about writing about dead people (like my parents). They don’t care anymore. But I’m careful if what I write about them involves other people who are still alive.

Using special precautions for minors, including my own children

When it comes to my kids, I talk about them in general terms and only about stuff that is standard for parenting teenagers. I would never knowingly post anything sensitive or private or embarrassing about any of them. I haven’t posted about them on social media in a decade and they don’t have social media themselves. I’ve discussed with them that I’m now publishing my writing and told them I will have a conversation with them first if I want to mention something specific about them in my stories.

What if after following all these guidelines, people still get mad at you for writing about them?

Even with all these precautions, some people will still have a problem with me writing anything that involves them or that they simply disapprove of. A family member recently mentioned that I was making up memories for attention.

As long as I write about my own experiences, memories, perspectives, feelings, or observations, I feel peaceful about it. I try hard to be as honest and factual as possible. But memories are not facts and any personal writing is a grey area. I’m careful to not assign motives or feelings to anyone else or tell other people’s stories that don’t directly involve me.

Aside from that, I have to let go of other people’s responses to my stories. This is difficult for me and an ongoing struggle. I’ve been writing about some pretty personal things. Some people don’t like it and never will. I remind myself that this might just be the price I have to pay for telling my stories. If I stopped, I’d have to pay a different price — for staying silent. It’s just a matter of which hard thing I choose. Which one will you choose?

6. How I finally started publishing consistently after failing for years, by working with my personality not against it

Whenever I tried to create a consistent writing practice, I eventually stopped. This time, I added an outside accountability aspect that included a requirement to not just write, but publish.

I had been a member of a writing group for a year and started a weekly newsletter as an exercise in accountability. A handful of my writing buddies subscribed and I now had a few people I respected who held me accountable to publish a newsletter every Tuesday.

Some people are internally motivated, some are like me and need external accountability to be consistent. I used to hate this about myself and felt inferior for not being internally motivated enough.

I found Gretchen Rubin’s “The Four Tendencies” very helpful in figuring out how to work with, rather than against, my personality. I decided to stop berating myself about this and use it instead to set myself up for success. I missed a couple of weeks due to illness or vacation over the last six months, but I’ve been more consistent than in my entire life.

7. The sweet, sweet rewards I got from getting over my fear of publishing (just kidding, I’m still scared)

I don’t believe anyone who says they don’t care about what their readers think of their work. Most writers write to be read eventually. Personally, the thing that got me to start publishing while still shit-scared, was that I wanted to see if I could support myself with my own words. I make a living as a technical and marketing writer. It’s fine, it’s good money. I can’t complain. But it’s boring and made me almost hate writing. Working on my personal articles and publishing them was a way to get back to my passion. Could I actually make money with things I wanted to write about?

Since I started regularly (weekly) publishing my work at the end of May 2021 (it is now Nov 2022), I was named a semi-finalist in The Medium Writers Challenge for my essay “How to become a more selfish parent”, exceeded 1,400 followers and made over $3,400. This is obviously not the returns many articles promise (How to make a gazillion dollars in 3 days doing no actual writing), but it is more than I expected from consistently publishing one thing every week.

The Medium Writers Challenge award marked the very first time I got paid for something that I wanted to write personally, not my work projects. All my own words, all exactly the way I wanted them. I hoped for one of those giant fake checks for the $100 prize money (or a real regular-sized check), so I could frame it and hang it over my desk to remind me that I can do it.

It was a much less glamorous PayPal transfer, but okay.

You may get better results, and you may not. The point is, you will get some results, and you won’t know which ones until you hit that publish button.

The most gratifying thing aside from feeling like maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to support myself with my own words in the future are the comments and messages I get from people: I feel seen. You put into words what I have been feeling. I thought I was the only one.

To feel seen and to see other people, to know myself, and to truly connect with other humans, that’s the reason I write and publish.

Note: This article was first published in The Writing Cooperative on January 19, 2022.