In one of our writing projects recently (which I’m involved in with Ian Gray and the lovely, talented Pamela Accetta Smith), I found myself bogged down by a reluctance to express myself. If you’ve thought at all about writing, you can see that this reluctance doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But we’re writing about gender issues, and it’s easy to worry that you’ll offend nice people if you are too direct. Once it became clear that my being constantly behind our schedule was a major drag to my co-conspirators, I resolved to get caught up. The way I did it was to simply write about what was on my mind without worrying so much about whether I would offend them.
The happy surprise was that they weren’t offended (at least not enough to quit the project!). Instead, they tell me that they found my work worthy of the project, if controversial. And more importantly, a lot of the concern around me being behind has evaporated.
Once of the things I was reminded of during this process is how often we “hallucinate” about what other people are going to think. “Oh, no, I can’t say that because So-And-So will think I’m a misogynist,” or “I want to team up with that company, but I’m sure their VP of Sales will say no.” The truth is, if you haven’t checked, then the answer you’re giving yourself comes from … YOU! When that answer is negative or self-defeating, guess who’s fault that is? That’s right, Bucky.
So unless you’re being deliberately offensive or you’ve had enough experience with someone to be able to predict their response with a high degree of certainty, just say it. You might be surprised at the results.
