OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
You can't write that.
You can't think that.
You can't imagine those things.
You don't have permission to be that person, to think like that, to write like that, to publish that.
You're a nice girl. What will people think of you?
That's my inner critic speaking, but I've also heard those words echoed from people close to me over the years. I think it's only been in the last six months that I have given myself permission to let the raw side of me loose on the page. I'm finally finding my voice.
It's scary as hell because it turns out my stories are dark and twisty, but it's also empowering and liberating to let my mind have a free rein.
But I have to keep reminding myself that I have permission to write. Or I would stay safe in the shallows.
A friend told me the other day that I've changed since I became a full time writer. But I think it's just that the inner me is finally making it to the surface after years of suppression and doing what I was supposed to do.
And how has this change in me come about?
I've been writing journals for 20 years but blogging here for nearly 5 years has changed me far more. Because clicking the Publish button has made me think more deeply about what I want to say.
Because these words are going into the world, and people may well read them.
Because I have met writers who have challenged me to go deeper.
Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time have witnessed the change as I've shared the journey with all its ups and downs.
Clicking the Publish button on Amazon or the other distributors has the same effect. It makes us braver over time, because we have to keep bringing our best to the page and we get almost instant feedback from readers.
This is the beauty of self publishing, because we don't need permission anymore.
If I hadn't self published Pentecost four years ago, or clicked Publish on this blog, I would still be a miserable IT consultant, talking about writing but not doing it.
If I hadn't persisted through three novels, I would not be finding my voice in the fourth.
If I had asked permission, or if I had waited to be picked, I would still be dreaming of what might have been.
Of course, permission to write and self-publish doesn't mean you'll get it right the first time.
It doesn't guarantee Hugh Howey or Amanda Hocking type success.
But it shifts you inside, it forces you to go further creatively. It enables you to clear the way for the next step, and after all, the writer's life is a journey of discovery, not a destination.
So you have permission. You are empowered.
To write.
To publish.
To connect with readers and writers all over the globe.
I'm done with taming the crazy. I'm giving myself permission. How about you?
Please do leave a comment below if this resonates with you. This is our community, and I sincerely thank you for sharing it with me.
This post was inspired by an article on agent Rachelle Gardner's blog entitled ‘Will My Publisher Let Me Self-Publish Too?” which sparked a lot of passionate comment and offended me over the aspect of permission. Rachelle has since published a Mea Culpa article.
Top image: Stamp permission granted from Big Stock Photo
I’ve been screaming from the rooftops that writing can be scary, that we delve into the depths of own selves over and over again! Yippee for the dark and twisted!!!
I am certainly feeling that there’s more of a market for the dark & twisted than I expected 🙂 Glad you’re also releasing the crazy!
Hi Joanna,
We are thankful that you are letting that raw side of you have some free rein. I feel like I am fighting an inner battle right now–the one that says, “Don’t write that–too dark”, to “Let ‘er rip!” We are all benefiting from your writing, your journey, your insights. Thank goodness you aren’t that quiet IT gal but the Writer gal with the big voice!
Thanks Penelope – I hope you can win the battle too – although I continue to fight it every day 🙂
Too right. Keep up the good work. Your information is a big help to self-publishing writers everywhere.
The ability and willingness to write, made it possible for me to start my own business way back in 1966! I left my job as a university professor, wrote a book that helped me launch a successful career in business … which in turn allowed me to finance a wonderful, active, adventurous life which I am still continuing at eighty-five years young. One secret of success is to find a need and write about it. Another is to never let folks discourage you from your chosen mission!
Go Skipp! 85 and still adventuring – you’re my hero 🙂 along with PD James, UK crime writer who is 92 and still writing
Renaissance, revolution, or both?
Seizing back power is not easy and Writers have bills to pay just like anyone else, but it has never before been more important.
The big publishing houses live in a massive comfort zone, which is why most books that ever make it onto the “best seller” list all have a manipulated or contrived theme.
Of course it is wrong to say that most of those Writers don’t deserve their praise and success, you can get very lucky in this game but rarely can you fluke ability.
As Writers we learn to live with rejection, thats ok we signed up for the job for better or worse so we deal with our lot and strive to learn and improve, this is accountability on our behalf, or indeed the road toward taking full ownership to our art should the nasty thunder clap of criticism eventually roll our way.
I have learnt that it has become far easier for me to deal with publishing biasses as the writer, but what I most certainly am unable to tolerate is how we are being treated as readers.
There is no such thing as a bad story. Of course the writer’s skill to construct any story may vary in terms of experience, but this is for her or his peers to decide. To be held in judgement by a boardroom consisting of number crunchers is just that, they have margined your hard earned piece out the window because it does not tick the boxes of their sterile macro environment, and they have systematically done this within minutes. You the writer are tough now; you’re learning on the run, but what of the potential reader? Surely that person has been betrayed!
Myself, I was chosen as a first time Author, oh the glory of it all, I will remember the second of that particular day for the rest of my life. The thing I had no clue of back then in my thin skin days however, was just what does “vanity publishing” mean?
Well Joanna has been gracious enough over the past few years enlightening us all to the perils of trust before trust has been adequately earned – if only I had been a member of this forum a day before I signed a particular poisoned contract, but hey, thicker skin now, probably better business man, and hopefully greater writer.
I am a fan Joanna and I agree with your pieces one and all, but the reason I chose to include my thoughts into your forum for the first time is a simple one: Most of us writers may probably never enjoy a nice artistic comfort zone of prosperity, which is fine, perhaps thats what makes some of us more edgy and dynamic; scary, cult like, who knows that is for the most vulnerable in this whole equation to decide…
The reader
As always
Layne R Flint
Joanna, it was after I came to this same realization that I signed a two-book contract and gained an agent. It’s not much different from the advice to stop looking for a spouse. That’s usually when you find one.
I like your illustration of this fact.
I agree with you. If you’re a writer you should write and stop looking for permission from publishers. I’ve published four (4) books on amazon and am about to release a fifth (5) in Sept because I stopped waiting around for someone to sign me because I signed myself. I know what I want to write and how I want to present my novels to the world so why wait on someone else to tell me how they want to do it? I salute all independent Authors and encourage them to invest time, money and trust in themselves.
RSB
Hi Joanna
You are a great encourager! Well done. Me , I have no self doubts. Always thought I was destined for great things and still do although at 76 I might have to settle for another two or three books. Which is not quite what I had in mind at 30. A lot of it has to do with my wife who has always encouraged me and reminded me of my great ability —”You always think your right don’t you ?” —”No dear I always know I’m right!”
And she is still encouraging me.
76? just a spring chicken! Look at PD James, still writing books at 92 … get writing Brian!
Hi Joanna,
This post is exactly what I need at this very moment. Yesterday, when working on my novel, I thought, “this is boring”,” this is not what I want to say”. But what I want to say will show me in a different light to the people around me… Risky.. But what’s the point of writing if I can’t write what I want. If I can’t reveal my deep dark secrets? Thanks for granting me permission, I feel more powerful now!
The world applauds
And then condemns
Never fear
Opinion!
That’s an epigram from my forthcoming book which I think resonates pretty well with your sentiments, Joanna 🙂
You decry: “You can’t write that. You can’t think that. You can’t imagine those things.” And so do I. However, there is also the flip side to total open doors to free expression. As an independent TV producer in the Seattle Community TV Network with about 80 hours of show time there was the time when I had to vote against extreme and kinky sexual activity being done by some with hooded faces. Amazingly, a lawyers NGO threatened to sue SCAN for refusing this activity guaranteed as free speech under the 5th Amendment. WELL, WHAT DO YOU ALL TINK OF DAT?
Hi Salim, this post is not a debate of what free speech means. It is more a personal statement that I need to let myself write what I need to.
As someone who has spent so much time giving others permission, helping them find their own voices (instead of giving me lyrics from songs on the radio they had painstakingly written out as if their own) and publishing them in raw as well as more polished forms (I started a mag for institutionalised writers to workshop across groups because their issues were similar but not written about elsewhere) … it has been a curious thing watching myself determine which parts of my own journey to publish and where.
Despite having an IT background, setting up a blog as continued to frustrate me technologically. Any fool might be able to do it, but somehow my intelligence keeps getting in the way!
But as I have persisted with and on behalf of others, so I persist with myself.
I have a few eBooks approaching launch… and more ideas than I can shape at the speed they come to me. But bit by bit I am uploading some of my performance poetry past, and finding a new place for myself in an online world.
have pen will travel… 😉
Hi Joanna,
Until very recently, I have never written, but I think I have always been a writer. One perhaps waiting for permission.
Your blog didn’t just strike a chord, it rang a cacophony as now that I have started to write, I constantly rub up against ingrained barriers, (what will people think!), and create my own bottlenecks where the flow struggles to get through to the page. Thank you so much for your insights and honest reflections, they have cast light into my world.
Joanna;
Thank you!
No seriously your post found its way to my email in-box and as I read a smile spread across my face.
There are some days I find I have to just give myself permission to try. It is so empowering when we can walk through the dark, thick woods where our doubting ghosts live and arrive at the shore of our own bubbling creative brook.
I hope you have a fantastic day!
Spoken from the heart. We are not children at school who need permission to speak, if we feel like writing then we shall do so.
Keep up the great work
Oh, Joanna, what a refreshing change. So many people are always awaiting permission… for simply the OK from someone, anyone, to live. I talk to people, to everyone and anyone. I will say that there are those who look offended at the sheer gall I have to comment “to them” on how these new buses are more like riding on a flatbellied ferry on a bad river crossing. “Do I know you?” is an all too common reaction and immediately looking for somewhere else to sit if I say ‘No’, or more slyly, ‘does anybody really know anybody?’ So it isn’t just we of the writing fraternity who can be beset with the ‘Permission bug’. I use my bus pass, which should start at 9 o’clock. Now, I know the meters switch on at 7 minutes to and just jump onboard and click the till, as it were,but any number of travellers will ask the driver quite timorously, ‘is it nine o’clock yet?’ When I teach classes on writing, whether it be stories, articles or family histories et al, and show my gatherings how to set up a page and alter margins, some still look aghast and gasp, ‘Are you allowed to do that?’ as if there is some great Word Processing spirit waiting to pounce on miscreants.
I suspect that, in Britain, whole generations have been brought up to believe that one must have permission to do almost everything… but we pay the publishers’ salaries, just as we pay those of civil servants, too many of whom are neither civil, nor do they serve… and they are just heartbroken that we really don’t need them… the publishers, that is. Civil Servants have no hearts.
Self publishing is only a vanity if nobody likes what we write… and doesn’t buy our books, stories, articles… apart from that, it’s just an expression created by the formal publishers to try and protect their own little nests. Writing is a lonely enough business, as it is. Sometimes our characters become more real to us than the actual bodies floating around with tea and biscuits and buns, when we need them. What we don’t need is to think that publishers are a necessity… if we need shoulder on which to cry… we have our agents! (Mine hides in the wilds of Sweden!). Just write and never be dammed (there’s a pun there folks!).
I hope it’s not greedy to make a second comment. I rarely read what others say about blogs. It is too often nitpicking, hateful, and not at all constructive. You readers, however, are consistently erudite and civil. I have read each of the comments carefully and often more than once.
I was particularly delighted by Skipp’s observations and would like to share a variation that reflects on the spirit of San Francisco and its businesses. There are few machines as ugly as cement mixers. Back in the 60s the Kaiser Cement Company chose a whimsical way to morph theirs into highly visible rolling delights. They painted them all a shimmering pink and emblazoned the rolling tubs of cement to read, “Find a need and fill it!” Good advice for anyone, as Skipp attests. Hooray for him — a genuine role model!
Thanks for making this a conversation Jay – and I do like to keep the tone of this site positive and upbeat and supportive 🙂
Hi
Its not permission I need, but some advice, I have written two books now, both gone nowhere, anyway, during my research I came across information, with reference to the Cuban Crisis in 1962, and how America was prepared to sacrifice the UK in that, the pulled their Submarines out of the Holy Loch in Scotland, and sent them to their firing stations in the North Sea, leaving behind the crews families, who were unaware of their husbands mission, the crew were forbidden to say what was happening!!!!!!! anyway, it never came to the UK being wiped out, but the plan was, that the Russians would have nuked Scotland, the Americans would have bombed Somewhere is Russia, but would not have damaged Moscow or the main industrial towns of Russia, but America would have been left untouched!!!!!!!! do you think, this of interest for today’s book readers????????
Just popping in to say I love your blog, Joanna!! And especially TODAY. Love it. Keep up the great work.
Love this post, Joanna! We were on the same page this week, because I blogged about combating negative programming when it comes to being a writer in my blog on Wednesday. The air is ripe with positivity!
http://mjpullen.blogspot.com/2013/05/go-ahead-check-your-pockets.html
Well said! The only permission you need is from yourself. After all, you’re the person who has to deal with the stories going around and around in your head. No one should stop you from getting them out there.