The Exorcism
Stop imagining the applause.
If your motivation to write begins with a visualization of the book signing, the bio photo, or the validation of strangers, you are not a writer. You are a set designer. You are engaging in “staging”—a desperate form of narcissism where you construct a persona because you are too terrified to construct a truth.
Writing is not about “furnishing sentences” to make them look expensive. It is not interior design. It is an exorcism.
Real work begins only when a thought becomes too toxic to keep inside. It starts when you are forced to say the thing that might ruin you, the thing that is ugly, the thing that pricks your skin.
If you are writing to be patted on the head, you are finished. The market is drowning in pretty, empty sentences. We do not need your decoration. We need your blood.
If the answer to “What do you have to say?” is “I want to be an author,” then do us all a favor: Don’t.
You must have something on your heart
It is not enough to have an “idea for a book.” Writing starts the moment a thought becomes too uncomfortable to carry alone.
Sometimes it is a pain that presses. Sometimes a spark of joy. Sometimes a small observation that refuses to let go. But you must actually want to say something.
The goal is the sentence that hits like a silent stone in the water, creating ripples you cannot control.
If you don’t want to say anything, don’t. You’ll end up with the furnishing of sentences. It will be pretty, but empty. And emptiness is boring when it doesn’t conceal a tension.
So the question is not just: Do you have something on your heart? But also: Are you willing to bleed to get it out?
What writing the truth really means
You say you want to write the truth? Fine. But truth isn’t beautiful. Sometimes truth is petty, jealous, and ugly.
Here is a truth I wrote down five years ago. I never showed it to anyone. It reveals insecurities, prejudices, and bitterness. It makes me look small. But you can’t look away from it. You want to read more.
Writing requires the courage to document the monster in the mirror.
They congratulated her. “Good job,” they said. Cake, happy smiles. But it wasn’t anything special. She had just written a pretty ordinary piece of code that worked okay. At least for the untrained eye. It wasn’t particularly good. Actually, it was poorly written.
Women aren’t good at programming. They don’t have an analytical mind.
But because she was fresh, young, and so deliciously and refreshingly un-Norwegian. From another country, another skin color. Then it’s huge. I wrote better things. More important things. Things that work. But I don’t get the praise. Not that I want it either. Attention is boring.
But misplaced attention. Undeserved attention. That is worse.
I should have gotten that attention. Even though I don’t want it.
You hated reading that. But you didn’t stop. And you won’t forget it.
That is the only metric that matters.
The next rule will be published next Tuesday
In the meantime, your homework:
Write 10 sentences you are ashamed to admit you mean.
Write one page about something you have avoided saying for five years.
Write what you truly hope writing will do for you—and what you fear it will reveal.
Write one sentence you know you will regret writing. Do not delete.
Please share if you dare.