The Eruption of Creative Fragility

And the Downfall of Online Writing

The artist has always been a fragile breed. One average review of a contemporary art show can send an artist into a binge-drinking tailspin that lasts until the next show or until they create the next great body of work. This is not a new thing.

We, those who create art of any kind, are not as open to the criticism that we so often attempt to elicit from our peers. Because once our peers give us any negative feedback at all, we renounce them as just another jealous bastardizer intent on bringing us, and our perfect art, down to the ground.

Writers have always been angsty, hiding away in their lair until the next great book of fiction is complete, only to burn it when their editor does not immediately tell them it’s the best book ever written. And now, since the title of writer is so all-encompassing, this creative fragility has come to rear its ugly head here — online.

What you are witnessing is the downfall of online writing.

Maybe it’s a product of reverse trolling or just internet hysteria, but half the time I find the comments more interesting than the stories online. And that’s the problem. Because that’s where all the meltdowns are happening. And they are all happening because we are too fragile.

I am not above creative fragility. None of us are. If I like my poem and some random account with no profile picture and two highlights to their name, drops in on it, and gives one clap, I am outraged.

Instead of realizing they are new, they don’t understand the system, and that a clap is a positive reward, I find myself in a holier-than-thou mood lambasting an account that didn’t even exist two days ago. Fragile.

God forbid someone highlights an error in one of my stories. Full-scale sarcastic thanks even though they were actually doing me a favor. We just can never accept the messes that we are. I can’t. And I know you can’t.

Creative fragility is erupting every day on social media and on internet writing sites because the modern-day internet writer is just so entitled. This new-fangled writer believes whole-heartedly in freedom of speech, but only in the way that serves them at that moment. And when it doesn’t or something goes awry, they backbend this speech freedom into an otherwise completely irrelevant conversation. Fragile.

The fragile creative can’t take rejection in any way, shape, or form. They submit their writing, not even spellchecked and rife with errors, to a small publication, and are awash with watery fury when those errors are pointed out and the piece is rejected.

“I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.” — Carl Sandburg

Perspective. We don’t have it. We live in this second only, except when this second involves proofreading or formatting or following the rules of submission, then we are fine just sending it off because it’s our words that are most important and we are very busy writers.

The fragile creative can turn any simple rejection email into a catastrophic attack on their person, a full-scale assault of words designed to victimize them and denounce them as a nothing writer with no hope of success. P.S. — the rejection email was a form letter that said:

Thank you for your submission. At this time, we just don’t see a fit for your work here, but we look forward to reviewing another submission from you in the future.

Meltdown.

Fragile.

The downfall of internet writing is sliding down the slippery back of the fragile creative. Why? Because the fragile creative is spending more time in Facebook “writing” groups or in Twitter spats or on email forward chains or researching how to get more followers in the next 30 days or anything under the sun or on the face of the earth other than writing.

The fragile creative is spending too much of that wonderful creative time mired in subjective blame instead of taking a look in the mirror and on the page to see where the real problems are. We just don’t want to see what we don’t want to see. We are the problem.

The second that someone doesn’t rub our back or give us a warm glass of tea with their review of our two-minute read, we go into a state of apoplectic shock and immediately take our troubles and gripes online to discuss them inside of an echo chamber of like-minded whiners. Fragile.

You aren’t above it. Neither am I. We all have our moments. But doesn’t there come a time in your life as a creative where you actually decide that your work can speak for itself? A time when it doesn’t matter who rejects you or who trolls you or who fake follows you because you are good. You are a writer. You write things that you are proud of. You write things that make you happy. Why do you need more than this?

The need for more is the shattered glass inside of the fragile creative. When they need positive feedback so badly to soothe their wilted creative ego, the shock of not receiving it becomes overwhelming and catastrophic. A simple choice becomes an act of domination. Standards become restrictions. Their words become vapid dust because the need for approval is far too great to bear.

“You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It’s like asking somebody to swallow the sun.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

One fragile, human psyche. That of the modern creative.

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