The Writer’s Ego

Don’t do it! they say.

I never do it, claim the most successful.

I don’t do it often, but every now and then it can be instructive to search my own name online (I would say, “to Google myself,” except that sounds a bit naughty).

It’s not something anyone should set aside time for, but rather to do as the mood strikes.  I can search two names: J. B. Cheaney refers to my fiction.  Janie B. Cheaney yields references to Wordsmith, WORLD Magazine, and a series of posts I wrote on Revolution War figures twenty years ago.  (Those mini-biographies are not only still online, but they still come up high in Google rankings, which tells me they’ve supplied many a high-school research project over the years.)  The WORLD references are the most volatile, even though, if someone is going to the trouble of quoting me, it’s usually because they liked something I said.  Unless they really, really disliked it.

Here’s a classic backhand compliment I came across during my last search: “Half the time she writes the most ridiculous stuff I’ve ever read, but the other half she’s spot on.  For example . . .” The blogger goes on to quote one of my less ridiculous statements.

I had to laugh. I mean, I had to—mirth in self-defense.

However, the more I think about it, the more genuinely funny it is.  Writers are roughly half-ridiculous—though some, it must be said, are all ridiculous, and wouldn’t be writing if it weren’t for the leveling fury of the Internet.

To turn one’s brain inside-out on paper is as risky as stepping out on a tightrope. It’s lining up words one after the other to bear the weight of one’s wobbling, wavering thought.  This is crazy enough to try in private, but if your words appear in print, everybody is looking.  Will I overbalance and fall, into the airy net of triviality or the unforgiving sawdust of pomposity?  Will I make it to the end of the rope, but in such a clumsy manner any applause will be inspired by pity?  Every time I step out on an idea, no matter how many times I’ve done it before, it’s with a certain amount of trepidation—will I make it this time?  Will I feel like I walked a straight graceful line from one point to the other, or will the work feel clumsy and inept?  Or will I fail and go splat? (It’s happened.)

However impressive it looks, there’s something inherently ridiculous about walking a rope.  Writing, too, at least on the face of it: why climb that ladder, stand on that platform, step off on the thin edge of that mysterious medium called language, and hope to get to the other side with some assurance of success?  Especially when so many others are doing the same thing, and many of them much better—or at least more successfully—than me?  Also especially, when the reader misses my point and thinks I’m ridiculous?

Even more especially, when he got my point and it might actually be ridiculous, like some of the stuff I wrote when I was twenty years old.

All I can say is that circumstances, gifts, and experiences have conspired to make it possible for me to do this.  So, “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”  The best attitude for a writer, I’ve found, is a humble self-confidence, or a cocky humility, that says,

I’m not the best at this and not everyone will like me.  But certain things only I can say; certain stories only I can tell; and certain readers are listening, whether they know it or not.  So I’m going to go for it, and do the best I can at it, and get better at it, and I will not buy into the lie that I’m only successful if the world falls at my feet.  Because then it would be all about me.

Every now and then it’s good to let Google remind me of who it’s not about.  And that we’re all—not just writers—a bit ridiculous.  (It comes with the territory of being human.)