How to Heal Your Bruised Writer’s Ego and Keep Writing
He told me it needed work. So I did the mature thing — I decided to quit writing.
I spent the whole weekend writing, coming out of it with a short story that felt like the best thing I’d ever written. It had tension, a touch of humor, and enough emotion that I cried as I wrote the end. I pored over that piece, tweaking and polishing it until it read like perfection.
“I’m done!” I bragged to my husband, and he asked to read it, just as I hoped he would. Then I stayed out of his way so he could fully absorb the story and I wouldn’t get in the way of the emotional finish. I imagined when he came back, he’d have tears in his eyes and want to discuss the troubled main character and the hard role of her father, and this very big thing the two of them were struggling through separately. But when he sat in front of me, the story in his hands, his eyes were dry, his face grim.
“It’s a first draft,” he said, then let me know how strong the bones of the story were, but that it needed more work before it was done. My ego flared brighter with each mark on the story. I mean, I’ve been a writer all my life, and an avid reader. I knew what I was doing, dammit.
So I did the mature thing. I spoke to him in short answers. I decided to quit writing. I went to bed with arguments rolling through…
