Worried Writers

While agents and editors can lay it all out in their blogs and say pretty much anything, writers have to think about getting readers and followers and fans who will buy their books-- thus we are nice and pleasant. As I wrote about here. After all, we're writers, we hate rejection. Our entire careers are based on avoiding it.

Have you ever wanted to post something but feared going too far? Do you ever hold back thinking, "Better not say that. People who matter might get upset. What if AN AGENT reads this"?

I used to read a book to my kids called Worried Walrus, and when anyone in our family got excessively worried about something, we'd say they were a worried walrus. I think sometimes we writers are worried walruses, afraid of saying, doing or writing the wrong thing to hurt our chances at publication, attracting readers, or achieving success in our careers.

Yesterday I read a post that was brutally honest in expressing what the industry has done to this writer's head since she began. I won't summarize but you can go here to read it yourself if you haven't already. Altho many have looked up to Natalie Whipple as having it all-- the dream agent *no longer in the business*, an editor at a dream publisher who loved her story *didn't work out*, and now still out on submission *where many would kill to be*-- still, the entire process put her through hell and back until she had to pour it all out on her blog.

And as she wrote it I'll bet you anything she worried about saying "too much"--about sounding whiny or ungrateful, about offending someone in the industry, perhaps alienating her blog readers. But she had to let it out, so she wrote the post and struck a chord, getting a zillion comments.

Let's pretend there'd be no repercussions if you wrote a post like Natalie's. What would be on it? What would you say about the industry? What's on your worried walrus writer list?