I Stopped Being an Egotistical and Entitled Writer

You know you would be better off dumping the dead weight from your writing career

Photo by Orkun Azap on Unsplash

It left without complaint or fanfare. One moment, it was there, an everyday fixture in life, then it was gone. No matter how boorish I felt it was, it always had something to say, so it felt good when I realized it was no longer there.

Knowing I would be better off without it, and actively “seeking the death of it” are two very different things. I hated myself when it was a part of me, but didn’t know before this that I would be any better off without it.

It wasn’t a relief when it left. Reacting to a situation, I turned, half-expecting it to be there with a snide comment or rant. But it was gone, dead. Somewhere along the way, all the good things got rid of it and my life was better for a change.

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Contrary to what most people think about me as a writer, I was the worst kind of entitled. Because writing had been my thing for so long — blogging, journaling, ghostwriting — I assumed I was a good writer, a great writer. Confident that my skills were marketable in the crowded online writing field, I felt I was one of the best.

Back in October 2018, as a new writer on the platform, I was starting at square one with no audience, but, felt once people saw my work online, there would be a flurry of activity around me. Editors would see my worth and feature me. Other writers would be talking about me.

Others “made it” with less talent, didn’t they? Don’t I deserve all the financial success and recognition that is reserved for the best?

Sure, part of it was misplaced confidence and wishing upon a star. Could I be a top writer? What if people knew my name in the same breath as King and Gaiman? What if I could become somebody just on the merits of my writing talent?

For a guy with no confidence in any other area of life, dreaming of a rich future on the back of my writing talent should have seemed like such a stretch.

But one could hope, right?

Months later, still sucking shallow water, my views were dismal. Other writers were shooting to the top, making thousands, and gaining followers.

That’s when the ego came into play. Comparing my writing to theirs, my rose-colored glasses only made it clear that I was being robbed.

The editors were ignoring me. They may have even blackballed me, or so I said.

The algorithms were bullshit. Every time progress was made and the numbers were showing favorably, there was a tweak.

Other writers were given a free pass because they were young, female, good-looking, rich, or lucky. If they were different from me, it was to their advantage, because for some reason, I had been deemed poison by the higher-ups who mattered.

Other writers picked popular topics to write about, but I still felt like I was a good enough writer that I should be able to write about anything and have success.

Why the need to write about self-help, sex, tech, or finance? Why couldn’t I write self-serving personal essays about my mental illness and expect the audience would carry me to the top on a cloud of adoration and respect?

Yes, I had a difficult life. I suffered through years of mental issues and heartbreaking setbacks. I thought I deserved a break or a top writer badge.

Didn’t my past and talent dictate I be at the top of the heap?

It went on for months, maybe a year, letting my ego feed me the fuel needed to stay angry at the powers that be, instead of looking for the real solution to the problem.

There were days of published rants, exploring the unfairness of it all. I took to Facebook to air my grievances and stir conspiracy theories about the various platforms that had it in for me.

I wallowed in poison, and my ego and entitlement were more than happy to keep adding strychnine to the cauldron.

One day, a top writer left a comment on one of my rants. She could have ignored my incessant complaining but she took the time to give me a bit of a critique.

She asked if the reason people were not following me in droves was that my writing was selfish, for myself. I never added a moral, a lesson, or a takeaway. I wrote about myself, my problems, and my experience, and never gave the reader a reason to be there.

I never gave them a reason to come back.

My ego wanted me to be angry, but it just happened that the writer who left this comment was a writer who I respected. Her writing was everything that mine wasn’t: wild, untamed, opinionated, and confident.

It made me think.

I didn’t study writing in school, and never had the constant critique and feedback you get from being in the trenches. My writing was self-taught and existed in an echo chamber of people fawning over me because I was a mentally ill writer who dared write the cringeworthy.

I never had feedback, until now.

Rereading my work from the previous few months helped and made me realize one thing when compared to the work of the writers who were at the top:

It was not effective writing.

It was bland and had no strong, confident voice. Writing about my mental illness and painful life with all the passion of someone describing how to fix a leaky toilet was what I was trying to accomplish.

Worse, I was writing for myself, my ego, and never gave my reader a reason for reading, a takeaway, a moral that would buoy them during the dark times.

I was a selfish, entitled writer, and egotistical.

On that day, with that realization, the entitled writer in me took its first step into oblivion. It started the journey that would see it gone from my life without me even knowing it was gone.

The next days, months, and years were spent reading and studying the masters, not just literature, but science fiction, horror, poetry, and memoir. Analyzing the work of the top online writers and figuring out the things they were doing that I wasn’t helped me to improve.

Every day my writer’s ego got further and further away, till it was just a blurry shape in the distance.

I was writing and publishing every day and making progress until a piece of mine was chosen by a huge publication and I finally got to work with an editor. This was the first time to ever have real, and sometimes brutal, feedback.

The piece was a success, but it still took me years to glean all the lessons while I wrote more, for different platforms and different groups of readers.

Sometimes I channeled the entitled writer by blaming and complaining, but shook it off and took a few steps back on the road to becoming a decent writer.

Then one day, when the drama inevitably happened, and I expected the entitled writer with the backpack full of ego to come out and say their piece on the matter, they didn’t.

It had left me. It died.

It was a beautiful day.

After the entitlement was gone, real work began. Reading every day, and not just the top writers, everything I could get my hands on was analyzed and compared. Writing and publishing even when the output was not brilliant. Working with an editor opened whole new worlds for me.

I’ve allowed people to tell me that sometimes, my work sucks. Not me. My work. Every piece of writing I create is not a masterpiece.

Still, creation is an everyday thing.

Spending much of my time inside my head has helped as well. In the past, I’ve tried to stay out of my head because it was a dark place of voices and pain. But after a pact with my demons and head has been made quiet for days at a time and my mind has sometimes become a place of creation and learning. It is still dark, but every so often, a light will shine in and illuminate the years of experience and ideas that reside there.

I look for feedback wherever I can get it. As writers, we tend to live in an echo chamber of our own design, and it helps us to step out of that and accept constructive criticism.

Read. Absorb. It’s much easier now that my ego is no longer telling me that everything I do, say, and write is perfect. It’s much easier to learn since the entitled writer inside me has died.

When something dies inside or goes away never to be seen again, it may be for the better.

Right?

So, what about you? Do you have an egotistical and entitled writer inside of you pushing you to be the worst kind of person and writer? Do you have something telling you that you should be on top, even if you haven’t put in the required work or paid your dues?

It is in your best interest to start the process of getting rid of that side of you because it is only hurting you and your progress toward the goal of being a successful writer. You need to start studying the people who are doing it right, the great writers without ego or airs. You need to start figuring out if your writing is truly as great as the entitled person inside of you thinks it is.

Read and analyze good writing. Compare what you are doing to the effective words of the people who have made a name for themselves.

It’s time for the writer side of you to stop being an entitled prick.