DON’T CENSOR by Fiction Niche’s Editorial Team

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“No, I can’t write that.”

“Wait, what am I doing?”

“It feels so strange. What if people don’t like it?”

“I am not sure anyone would like this. It’s unlike anything I’ve read before.”

Ever caught yourself thinking any of these whilst brainstorming for your new prose or poetry? Believe me, you’re not alone in that. At some point, we all have caught ourselves thinking one of these—if not all of these eventually. Some of us even go beyond catching ourselves in these thoughts. We let ourselves wallow in them, thinking and thinking and thinking some more.

We are writers, aren’t we? Our minds are weird. That’s just the way it is. We know this. And sadly, we can’t help with the weirdness even if we tried. So, it’s only normal that we a lot of times question if the world outside our heads can take in what we offer it through our art. We question if our readers will appreciate our stories or poems.

More often than not, we fear that they’ll not. We fear that they’d swipe past their phone screen (if they are reading on an online journal) or flip pages after the first few lines, scoffing in disinterest, then go on to take note of our names—so as to never read from us again. And somehow, we convince ourselves to trash our most ‘bizarre,’ our most ‘special’ ideas. Thus, sticking to the more conventional ones. Ones we believe readers will be more open to.

As a writer of speculative fiction, I have fallen for this self-deceit too many times in the past.

When I first started writing fantasy, I was not used to the genre at all. Fantasy is one tricky genre, I won’t lie to you. One does not only need a creative mind to write it. One also needs a lot of confidence. Both of which I did not have. Then, I would come up with ideas. Superb ones. But I’d discard them. Come up with some more. Discard. Repeat the cycle; over and over, until frustration begins to creep in and I decide to stick to the conventional.

Well. Having gathered experiences, I can say that I know better now. I know that: whilst it is a good thing to have our readers at heart whilst making art, we writers do ourselves a disfavor each time we suppress our creativity just because we want to be conventional. Because we want to be applauded and thought a favorite by readers.

Even though it often doesn’t feel like it, this is what happens when we hamper our creativity: we wake our inner critic, entering into a subconscious fight with ourselves; a struggle that a lot of times shows up in whatever we end up creating; affecting the flow of words and manipulation of emotion.

We also subconsciously become ‘reader pleasers,’ rather than the world changers that we are meant to be. You should know that any writer whose main aim is to please his readers would in the end fail to do so. Sad, but true. No one pleases readers by trying to do so. But anyone would easily become a favourite if he or she sticks to being him or herself.

You are your art. Realize this, dear writer.

Every work of art you put out there is just pieces of you, like pieces from a broken mirror, conjoined into one beautiful mosaic. When your readers read you, they do not only see you. You are a reflective mirror, remember? They see a piece of themselves, too. And guess what? They fall in love. But when you censor your art, you lose your lustre. You become like old bronzeware. Unattractive. No one likes unattractive.

This is just why you should give out your all. Your readers want all. They want to see themselves in your work. Write that idea. No matter how weird it is. And when you do write it, don’t censor anything. Silence your inner critic and write. Focus on letting yourself slip into those pages. On baring everything. Focus on gifting the world your philosophies and ideas.

The world would never reject good gifts. And, your idea is a perfect gift.

Fiction Niche.

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