My heart broke a little bit when you talked about the impact of Instagram on your original voice. Being a successful writer should not deprive us of the intuition which allows us to write work which reflects our truths and instead requires us to edit ourselves to anticipated critics. 💕💕💕
Yikes I’m so sorry that agent did that to you! It sounds like it stifled your creative process. Jane Friedman says a good portion of authors getting deals are first timers and Im trying to cling to that as someone who is trying to publish for the first time.
I left a media start up recently where I wrote/managed too many online voices (and felt the emotions and egos of company’s/brands/etc) and THAT experience, man. I have just now, after what I have been calling my summer break of three months, am able to relax enough to even know my own voice. True work related PTSD. . . So I identify with Jessica’s previous situation. . . Always intrigued by what you all are sharing! Thank you 🙏 I’m nearly ready to put real sentences together again.
I was a Yelp community manager for a while, and I STILL hear the voice of the trolls in my head that Jessica DeFino mentions here when I go to write, a decade later. It messed with my flow and my willingness to be vulnerable and visible for quite a while. Instagram is basically like Yelp but for people and/or their ideas, and I do not back that as a concept, even if I feel forced to participate in it sometimes. But Flirte Jesus, I do back, 100%.
This is such a great interview. I have been reflecting on the origins of my voice and the different voices that show up in my writing. I really appreciate the comments Jessica makes about IG and how that it is still in her head two years off the app. This resonates with me on many levels.
Not “literary” advice, but in a similar vein, as a young personal trainer (aka early 20something who didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life but who liked working out ((aka was silently struggling with disordered eating! Fun stuff!)) so decided to get a fitness training certification) someone told me “your body is your billboard.” You can guess how that landed amongst my very dysfunctional body image and food/calorie/exercise thoughts at the time. The whole “your body is your billboard” feels like it expresses a similar sentiment as “you need 10k followers to sell a book”— “your followers are the basis of your success.” Boiling “success” (already a completely subjective and individual experience!) down to a single metric like the way your body looks or how many followers your have on a single social platform gives me, as the kids these days say, “the ick.”
"MOST PEOPLE ARE OTHER PEOPLE!! It’s so true it hurts. I think I am terrified of being other people."
I don't know if this will help or make it worse...but we can't help but be made up of other people (as well as ourselves). Our brains don't and can't stop at our skulls. They automagically mirror the people around us - we learn language from them, attitudes and beliefs, changes of attitudes and beliefs, motor skills - and on and on. We are mimics and can't *not* be. The trick, IMHO, is to choose who and what we expose ourselves to so we are letting our brain "build in" our preferred ways of being rather than picking up random bits of others.
I look forward to that article on self-care in an era when the individual sense of self is so widely obscured by marketing. And the Oscar Wilde quote actually feels very apt for it! 🖤
I want to write without necessarily being seen. I don't want to have to be a marketing whiz to write about Black beauty culture. But, growing my newsletter has proven that in some ways I need to build an audience off the visual to grow my readership. This puts my concept of self (how I feel compelled to present myself to attract potential readers vs. my shy self) at odds.
These questions are helping my writing voice though, as I'm feeling very experimental lately.
I’ve hugely admired Jessica’s work, especially as an ex-makeup artist and beauty journalist. She said so many things I wanted to say.
In fact at Uni, one of my lecturers wrote some beauty journalism as a side gig and she hated me because I wrote an essay called ‘why you should give dumbed down beauty journalism a wide berth’. She critiqued my work so harshly and made me question my voice, I later understood she felt personally attacked, which wasn’t the intention but yes, her beauty writing towed the dumbness of the editorial line.
My recent writing, since the beginning of this year is a constant exercise in belonging to myself, I could write an essay on this itself but I won’t here!
I hope you write that piece somewhere, some day. I mean this sincerely, please tag me in it so I can read it. Finding my own voice in writing has been a long and complicated path. In fact underlying this entire series is the desire to belong so fully to myself that my voice rings out wherever I may be. Easier said that done, though. Thanks for being here. 🙏🏼
Instagram broke my writing voice as well. I also got stalked online and every place I expressed myself (blog, IG, LinkedIn, Twitter)—she found me. Super unhealthy on both counts, trying to get back to trusting my journal.
This Oscar Wilde quote will live rent-free in my head forever now and I will constantly wonder who I would be without the constant influence and pressure from others.
This!! Someone asked me recently what I'd tell my 13-year-old self (who was *just* pre-social media, thank goodness), and it would honestly be that other people really don't matter. They're other people! And I'm not in touch with any of the other people my 13-year-old self thought were so important.
I love people. They're great. But this reminder that they're 'other' people was so needed today.
I'm tempted to take a leaf out of Jessica's book and tape the quote above my desk!
Jessica, when you said that your writing voice hasn’t been the same since social media, that really resonated with me. I started taking breaks from social media last year and have been off completely since January this year. Witnessing the way regular ol’ humans rip each other apart in the comments or the way people post with such snarky know-it-all tones, or seeing how adults bully a kid just singing the national anthem….. it got to me. All I do is second guess myself! Will someone find a hole in my argument?? Will they think my new art hobby sucks because it’s not as good as what they’ve seen on Instagram?? Why are people still giving me advice for my skin? I was told I didn’t care about my engagement because I didn’t post it on Instagram!! The troll/criticizing/constant advice voice is louder than ever. I just want to have a conversation with someone that has nothing to do with what they’ve just seen on tiktok or Instagram 🫠
Oh my God, the matching lip and nip. And Jessica‘s insight into the way products are too often utilized to create image, rather than express self, to even keep us from realizing there is a difference, and it is vast.
Thank you for this terrific interview, Amanda and Jessica!
My heart broke a little bit when you talked about the impact of Instagram on your original voice. Being a successful writer should not deprive us of the intuition which allows us to write work which reflects our truths and instead requires us to edit ourselves to anticipated critics. 💕💕💕
thanks for inspiring writing. please bring me to the reference.
Yikes I’m so sorry that agent did that to you! It sounds like it stifled your creative process. Jane Friedman says a good portion of authors getting deals are first timers and Im trying to cling to that as someone who is trying to publish for the first time.
I left a media start up recently where I wrote/managed too many online voices (and felt the emotions and egos of company’s/brands/etc) and THAT experience, man. I have just now, after what I have been calling my summer break of three months, am able to relax enough to even know my own voice. True work related PTSD. . . So I identify with Jessica’s previous situation. . . Always intrigued by what you all are sharing! Thank you 🙏 I’m nearly ready to put real sentences together again.
I was a Yelp community manager for a while, and I STILL hear the voice of the trolls in my head that Jessica DeFino mentions here when I go to write, a decade later. It messed with my flow and my willingness to be vulnerable and visible for quite a while. Instagram is basically like Yelp but for people and/or their ideas, and I do not back that as a concept, even if I feel forced to participate in it sometimes. But Flirte Jesus, I do back, 100%.
This is such a great interview. I have been reflecting on the origins of my voice and the different voices that show up in my writing. I really appreciate the comments Jessica makes about IG and how that it is still in her head two years off the app. This resonates with me on many levels.
Not “literary” advice, but in a similar vein, as a young personal trainer (aka early 20something who didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life but who liked working out ((aka was silently struggling with disordered eating! Fun stuff!)) so decided to get a fitness training certification) someone told me “your body is your billboard.” You can guess how that landed amongst my very dysfunctional body image and food/calorie/exercise thoughts at the time. The whole “your body is your billboard” feels like it expresses a similar sentiment as “you need 10k followers to sell a book”— “your followers are the basis of your success.” Boiling “success” (already a completely subjective and individual experience!) down to a single metric like the way your body looks or how many followers your have on a single social platform gives me, as the kids these days say, “the ick.”
"MOST PEOPLE ARE OTHER PEOPLE!! It’s so true it hurts. I think I am terrified of being other people."
I don't know if this will help or make it worse...but we can't help but be made up of other people (as well as ourselves). Our brains don't and can't stop at our skulls. They automagically mirror the people around us - we learn language from them, attitudes and beliefs, changes of attitudes and beliefs, motor skills - and on and on. We are mimics and can't *not* be. The trick, IMHO, is to choose who and what we expose ourselves to so we are letting our brain "build in" our preferred ways of being rather than picking up random bits of others.
Oooh. Love this.
I look forward to that article on self-care in an era when the individual sense of self is so widely obscured by marketing. And the Oscar Wilde quote actually feels very apt for it! 🖤
Omg. Nips & lips 🤣🤣 flirte Jesus!! 😆 now I need to go check to see if mine match 😂😂
That Oscar Wilde quote is *chefs kiss* going to add it to the post-it-quotes on my kids’ bathroom mirror right now!
I want to write without necessarily being seen. I don't want to have to be a marketing whiz to write about Black beauty culture. But, growing my newsletter has proven that in some ways I need to build an audience off the visual to grow my readership. This puts my concept of self (how I feel compelled to present myself to attract potential readers vs. my shy self) at odds.
These questions are helping my writing voice though, as I'm feeling very experimental lately.
I’ve hugely admired Jessica’s work, especially as an ex-makeup artist and beauty journalist. She said so many things I wanted to say.
In fact at Uni, one of my lecturers wrote some beauty journalism as a side gig and she hated me because I wrote an essay called ‘why you should give dumbed down beauty journalism a wide berth’. She critiqued my work so harshly and made me question my voice, I later understood she felt personally attacked, which wasn’t the intention but yes, her beauty writing towed the dumbness of the editorial line.
My recent writing, since the beginning of this year is a constant exercise in belonging to myself, I could write an essay on this itself but I won’t here!
Thanks for this great piece.
I hope you write that piece somewhere, some day. I mean this sincerely, please tag me in it so I can read it. Finding my own voice in writing has been a long and complicated path. In fact underlying this entire series is the desire to belong so fully to myself that my voice rings out wherever I may be. Easier said that done, though. Thanks for being here. 🙏🏼
And yes I will tag you when I write it!
I hear you! And so much YES, my goodness my heart sings hearing a woman’s devotion to belonging to herself 💜
Instagram broke my writing voice as well. I also got stalked online and every place I expressed myself (blog, IG, LinkedIn, Twitter)—she found me. Super unhealthy on both counts, trying to get back to trusting my journal.
This Oscar Wilde quote will live rent-free in my head forever now and I will constantly wonder who I would be without the constant influence and pressure from others.
This!! Someone asked me recently what I'd tell my 13-year-old self (who was *just* pre-social media, thank goodness), and it would honestly be that other people really don't matter. They're other people! And I'm not in touch with any of the other people my 13-year-old self thought were so important.
I love people. They're great. But this reminder that they're 'other' people was so needed today.
I'm tempted to take a leaf out of Jessica's book and tape the quote above my desk!
Jessica, when you said that your writing voice hasn’t been the same since social media, that really resonated with me. I started taking breaks from social media last year and have been off completely since January this year. Witnessing the way regular ol’ humans rip each other apart in the comments or the way people post with such snarky know-it-all tones, or seeing how adults bully a kid just singing the national anthem….. it got to me. All I do is second guess myself! Will someone find a hole in my argument?? Will they think my new art hobby sucks because it’s not as good as what they’ve seen on Instagram?? Why are people still giving me advice for my skin? I was told I didn’t care about my engagement because I didn’t post it on Instagram!! The troll/criticizing/constant advice voice is louder than ever. I just want to have a conversation with someone that has nothing to do with what they’ve just seen on tiktok or Instagram 🫠
Oh my God, the matching lip and nip. And Jessica‘s insight into the way products are too often utilized to create image, rather than express self, to even keep us from realizing there is a difference, and it is vast.
Thank you for this terrific interview, Amanda and Jessica!