What happens when “Saying The Thing” isn’t enough?

The three most significant words in my professional life (and gradually, as I sat with them, probably my personal life too) were not writing advice. Or, rather, like all the greatest writing advice, they weren’t really about writing.

Say The Thing came to me from the then-deputy-editor of a magazine I was incredibly excited to be writing for. My commission’s subject was very significant to both of us personally. As a result, I was desperately trying to “do justice” to it. At least, in my head that’s what I was doing. What I was doing in the world was the opposite.

I’d written many times my piece’s recommended word-count, and didn’t know which were the “right” words. I was frozen in the perfectionism-procrastination of trying to make my piece contain, and be, everything it possibly could. As a result of trying to be everything, it had lost all sense of who or what it was.

The best writing advice is never about writing

Say The Thing allowed me to find the heart of the piece. It let me recognise what there was – and wasn’t – space for in this article.

It also made me recognise there were many articles’ worth of material in what I was trying to cram into one – which is not how to show love to our ideas. That doesn’t work for words, I realised, any more than showing love to animals by keeping them all together in cramped, impossible conditions. I could care for them better by separating them into their own Word docs where they had space to run around.

Say The Thing let me prioritise, and let my words breathe.

The best writing advice is about the writer

Over the following weeks and months, Say The Thing became the gold standard in my head for cutting to the heart of what I really wanted, needed, thought and felt.

I realised anything I was overthinking – not just overwriting, but choices in my work and social calendar, finding the difference between fun and FOMO, everything – became clearer if I asked myself what The Thing was so I could then Say it to myself.

Once I’d heard it, clearly and truly, I could work out what I needed to do or who I needed to say it to. Instead of rushing, I was thinking and feeling clearly. Then, when it came to acting on those thoughts and feelings, I was acting truly.

I thought about all this again earlier this week, when a client messaged me this question:

“What about when Saying The Thing isn’t enough?”

I asked them to tell me more about what “not enough” meant.

“If the other person just won’t see it? Won’t listen? What can I do without going nuts?”

Before I replied, I reflected on the question and how proud I already am of the questioner. Way back when we first met, this client’s love for their writing was making the gap between the perfect thing in their head and the imperfect thing on the page so painful, they couldn’t look at it enough to proofread or, therefore, make it better before submitting.

Today, they’ve built so much creative confidence muscle-tone that not only proofreading but, more importantly, the writing and editing they wanted to do in the first place are established habits.

Off the page too, this client has recognised the wins that come from looking what we want in the eye, and allowing ourselves to (first) recognise in our own minds then (second) communicate to others what we want to say, do, change or achieve, and ask for the help that will make it happen so we are not keeping our world overwhelmingly on our shoulders alone.

From thinking the Writers’ Gym couldn’t be for them, this client has built creative confidence to transform their creative and personal life to suit who they truly are and what they truly want. They are enjoying their writing and life so much more deeply as a result. So, to have this problem at all – how to handle pushback when we’ve Said The Thing – shows a massive leap.

 

The best writing advice is not advice

Once I had more information on what my client meant by “not enough”, I didn’t ask any more. I didn’t need to know who the person was. I didn’t ask what the client was saying that the other person wasn’t hearing. I didn’t advise on what to say or do. I said:

“You are not responsible for other people’s reactions.

Your truth is not your truth because someone else accepts it, acknowledges it or hears it.

We can be sad and grieve for the relationship we’d like to have or the version of that person we think could be – and we can love them for who they are (not who we wish they were).”

This was a polite but – I hope – clear example of that all-important creative writing lesson, Show-Don’t-Tell: If the other person not agreeing with or validating our point of view means we think we’re crazy – or we go crazy – because we are not being agreed with, we aren’t in charge of our own values. We’re giving that person a level of power over us they never asked for, potentially and – if they’re reasonable people – wouldn’t want to disempower us by having.

We can’t “solve” other people.

Our truth is not our truth because of their agreement or understanding.

Neither is their truth theirs because we agree with it or understand it.

We can only Say The Thing, and live by our truth.

In this reply, I didn’t tell my client what to do. I signalled what is, and isn’t, our power (and, frankly, our business!): what’s happening here is maybe not that Say The Thing is ever “not enough”. Maybe it’s perfectionism: “needing” things to be perfect in order to be content with them.

And maybe we’re actually stronger than we think we are. Maybe, when the agreement or acknowledgement of the other person cannot be the goal, giving ourselves our own permission to go our own authentic way can.