Family and Friends Who Don’t Support Your Writing are Toxic
How do I deal with unsupportive people? I don’t.
Someone asked the other day how I would deal with family or friends that don’t support my writing.
The harsh truth is: I don’t.
Let me give you a little back story as to why I feel that way, and perhaps you’ll understand where I am coming from. Maybe you’ll make moves to protect yourself, too.
I’ve been writing for many years now. Four decades ago, I discovered a passion for it, and have had it a part of my life in some form or another since.
During my angst-filled teen years, I penned three novels (all admittedly terrible) and dozens of short stories. I didn’t go out as much as I should, preferring to spend much of what free time I had in front of my typewriter tapping away.
I enjoyed the catharsis, putting the terrible experiences of an abusive childhood into the life of my characters. Good times.
Life led to destruction.
By the time I hit my early twenties, I had already been married, with a child, and divorced.
That’s when I ended up with my second wife. She was great, at first, until the relationship transformed into hideous abuse at her hands and lips.
She knew I was a writer. She understood my deepest desire was to publish my stories, to see them freed into the world, to make a life of their own.
A couple of years into the abuse, she took everything I had written she could get her hands on and threw them into a bonfire.
Her words still haunt me three decades later.
“You’re useless. I’m doing this for your own good. No one wants to read this shit.”
I stopped writing that day and didn’t put another word on paper for the next three years that marriage lasted.
When I finally escaped the situation, I began putting pen to paper again, pouring out stories one after another with a vengeance.
I’ve always been pretty prolific. On a good day, I can manage 8000 words or more and have written three short stories in one day before. Once the ball gets rolling for me, I don’t stop.
The gal I ended up with next was who actually helped me escape my situation with my second wife. She knew the abuse I went through and understood I was a writer. She was always a little stand-offish about that, but I thought little of it at the time.
I just wanted to write. I needed to get the words out.
A year later, she broke up with me when I was at work. When I got home, everything I owned was gone.
The only thing she left for me was what I had in my car and the clothes on my body when I went to work that day.
I lost everything in such a short amount of time.
All those stories were gone. Over two decades of work and words destroyed or stolen.
It was all due to people who cared nothing for me, my passions, or my desires. They did it because they were users and cruel, and between the two, I didn’t write again for over 15 years.
Imagine that for a moment. 15 years’ worth of stories I could have written. The hands of people who didn’t care took all the progress I could have made in my career.
It was a harsh lesson for me, and still affects the way I approach my writing today.
It still affects me years later.
Even now, with over 14 books published, and dozens more short stories out there in the world, I still sometimes have difficulties sitting down to write.
The not-so-little voice inside my head tells me I suck, that I can’t do this and that I should not bother trying. He’s hard to shut up sometimes.
So, yes, the hard fact is when family or friends, at this stage of my life, are unsupportive of my writing, I cut them away like dross.
I’m not meaning those who are merely disinterested. Those are different set of circumstances. Some people are not readers and have no interest in the process of writing or writers in general.
That’s okay.
There are those, however, who actively discourage or feel it’s their sense of duty to tell you to stop. They say to give it up because you’re not going to make it. You’re not good enough or you will not make any money off of it are also common terms they’ll use.
Make a choice not to deal with that kind of person.
I don’t deal with those people. They are as useless to me as a cut-off toenail, and I have to treat them with the same accord.
I must, because I’ve been “taught” that those are the ones who are most dangerous to my mental health and my career.
The emotions, the energy of their words and actions, are no different from the ex-wife who threw my stories in a fire. They’re the same type of people who stole my work and never allowed me to see it again.
They are the ones you must shield yourself from.
I’m willing to bet they are, in fact, using you.
Let’s take, for example, a friendship you have.
The person might be nice enough, and you’re willing to support them in whatever ideas they have. You spend time and energy helping them through this problem or that, going where they need it or even giving them funding to assist them.
Then, when you talk to them about your newest story or an idea you have for a book, they tell you that you should stick with your job. They might play it off as innocuous, the subtle phrases or looks they give you as you talk.
They’re using you. The relationship is definitely not on a two-way street.
You’re spending your energy helping them, supporting them, being there for them. All the while, they are doing nothing to help uplift your own dreams, and their subtle backstabbing is doing you far more harm than good.
It might sound cruel, but you have to be kind to yourself.
I admit I might sound a little cruel with all of this, but I’ve been through some tough learning lessons with this stuff, and I hate seeing anyone else fall prey to people who only do harm.
Guard your heart. Keep your focus on those who do support you. Ask yourself why you would keep someone around who is actively fighting against your own dreams and desires.
Is it worth it? Are they giving an equal amount they are taking from you?
In order to get back into writing, I had to decide I would never allow unsupportive people to be in my life again. I don’t have the time or energy to go through what I did in the past anew.
Surround yourself with those who help you rise, not kick you down the stairs when you turn your back on them.
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About me:
I am an author with over a dozen books and dozens of short stories published. I have experience with both traditional and self-publishing and love to discuss the pros and cons of both.
Why do I write? Because I am blind and live on woefully low disability payments each month. The government graced me with trying to live on about $700 per month, and I decided to start publishing because I also like to be able to eat.
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