[image description: a pile of book pages with a yellow banner across the photo that says “ask a book nerd.”]

I’m back with the Ask A Book Nerd advice column! Except this week the question is more about writing than books and it’s one I get asked a LOT.

I’m afraid of what my family will think of my writing. What can I do?

If I had a nickel for every time I got asked this question, I’d be a wealthy lady. That’s not to minimize the concerns posed by the question, but rather to illustrate how pervasive this fear is. In short: You’re not alone.

What hurts my heart is I’ve seen gifted, talented, driven, dedicated writers who desperately want to be published who either never submit their work or wait several decades to submit their work because they’re so afraid of what their family will think of their writing that they let the imagined voices of their family members in their head keep them from fulfilling their dream of being a published writer.

I usually see this with nonfiction writers, particularly memoirists, though occasionally fiction writers experience this too. My experience with this has been as a personal essay writer. I frequently write about my family and while I do my best to paint a whole and complete picture of who they are as people and who we are as a family, the portrayals are rarely glowing. That’s because the people in my family are, shall we say, not the nicest people.

I owe it to my readers to tell the truth, my subjective truth as I have experienced it. If my family takes issue with that, perhaps they should’ve thought to behave better.

Interestingly, while my family has been displeased with plenty of things I’ve written, they’ve never actually denied the truth of my claims. I distinctly remember my mother calling me once after an essay was published saying, “You made me sound horrible. People are going to think I’m a terrible mother.” To which I replied, “Well, I told the truth as I remember it. Do you remember it differently?” She responded, “I just don’t see why you had to make me sound so bad.” I tried again: “Mother, is that not how you remember what happened? Do you think I misrepresented the event in question?” And again, she only spoke of her hurt and her worry about what other people would think.

To put it bluntly, she knew she behaved exactly as badly as I described. She just didn’t want anyone else to know about what she did. Her issue wasn’t with the veracity of my essay, it was over her fear of other people smelling our dirty laundry.

The fact is that someone is always going to dislike your writing for one reason or another. Your family is simply another couple of members in the crowd of your would-be critics.

A favorite Southern idiom of mine is “shit or get off the pot” and I feel it applies here. Either write without regard to what your family might think or don’t. There is no in-between. Your family doesn’t own you and they don’t get to control your dreams. If you decide not to write because you’re afraid of what they’ll think, then you don’t get to blame them for you not fulfilling your writerly dreams. That’s on you.

That said, the bitterness and resentment that will inevitably bubble up if you don’t write what’s in your heart is precisely why you should write anyway! All the writers I know who refuse to share their writing because of their family already have incredibly strained and difficult relationships with those same family members who they’re allowing to control their destiny.

It’s not like your relationship is going to improve simply by you not writing. Them disliking your writing might make your already bad relationship worse, but again, it was probably already bad. And I presume if you’re old enough to even ponder the question of what your family will think then you’re likely well into adulthood and are therefore old enough to make informed decisions about who you allow into your life.

Personally, I have chosen to cut ties with my family for many reasons, their disapproval of my memoiristic writing being a small factor, and I have never been happier. My mental health is greatly improved, my stress levels are reduced, the time I would normally spend dreading seeing them or talking to them is now free. To be blunt: I now have more time, energy, and bandwidth to produce the work that I’m meant to create.

But I realize humans are social animals and not everyone wants to cut off their family, regardless of how poorly they behave, and those who want to may not feel that they can. This is where chosen family and community come in. I encourage you to adopt the thinking that family is not defined by blood, but who you’re with when you feel your best, happiest, and most supported. But I won’t go on about that because it’s a conversation you’d be better off having with your therapist.

At the risk of sounding harsh, my opinion is that if you’re really struggling with writing or not writing based on what your family thinks, you’re not ready to write anything outside of your journal or hard drive. If your writing gets published, you’re going to be expected to stand by it. If you can’t confidently do that, don’t put yourself in a position for the anguish that will inevitably ensue. No byline is worth that.

And believe me, if your heart isn’t in it, editors and readers will know. Work out your issues, talk to a therapist, and decide how ready you are before you publish.

Your dreams matter. You wouldn’t have the will to be a writer if the call didn’t exist within you and that call wouldn’t be there if you weren’t meant to answer it. You can either choose yourself and your truth or you can choose others and silence. There is no in-between, only the consequences of either choice. That’s a decision only you can make for yourself. It’s something no writing class can teach you and something that no advice column can do for you. You have to decide, on your own, definitively, what you’re willing to risk to speak your truth.

I can only say that I haven’t regretted the decision for a moment.

If you’ve got a question related to books, writing, reading, or pretty much anything else you’d like me to answer, submit your question here.