Showing Your Creative Writing to Others

Sally sent in this question about the difficulty of showing your creative writing to others:

"I'm a very private, painfully shy aspiring author. The problem I'm having is letting others read my work. I write fiction/fantasy/science fiction/romance (sort of), and I can't even allow my mother to read anything I write, not that it has anything bad like profanity or is pornographic. How can someone like me get past the insecurity of showing my work that I feel proud of?"

I'm really not sure that I'm the best person to answer that one, Sally (I'm just a novel writing guy!) However, I'm kinda shy myself, so I know exactly where you're coming from.

The key thing you said in your question is that you feel proud of your creative writing - meaning your mother will likely feel about one hundred times more proud (because mothers are like that!) So my advice is just to do it. Like I said, I'm shy myself, and I know that not doing something leaves you feeling worse in the long run than the short-term discomfort of just gritting your teeth and doing it.

I hope that helps, Sally.

Now, for anyone else reading this, I also want to talk about when to show your creative writing to others...

There is a great temptation for people just starting out in writing - and for experienced novel writers, too, come to think of it - to show it to other people very early on in the writing process. That is rarely a good idea.

During the Step-by-Step Novel Writing Process, all of your creative energy should be focussed on the piece of fiction you are working on. During this time, you will probably find yourself working on your fiction writing even when you aren't working on it - that is, you will still be running scenes through your head or thinking about a particular character even when you are watching TV or lying in bed.

So here is the thing: If you show your novel in progress to other people, and maybe even discuss it with them, some of that creative energy somehow gets lost. Instead of channelling your novelistic energy onto paper in the form or planning notes or a first draft, it will disappear into the ether.

So be patient. Don't talk about your novel with anyone else, or let anybody read it, until it is as perfect as you can make it. Then, shy or not, you can release it into the world and feel proud of what you have created.

Harvey