Although I most often have this page as one of the "stand-by" windows on my screen, I haven't not-noticed how old the most recent post is. Another window I often keep on my screen is to HubPages. I go there either when I want to take a break from my own stuff and want to see what, if anything, is going on there; I also go there when I'm bored and/or tired. Sometimes, too, I can find things to write about (or plan to write about) on there. If I don't find anything worth "turning into a whole big thing" there's also their questions/answers section (which these days is pretty much a "discussion type of thing", whether or not that was the original aim of the people running the site).
In any case, today I ran into a question that asked writers if they'd "taken risks" with getting their writing out there and read. Somewhere in the discussion someone suggested that some writers might be too afraid of "mass rejection" (or, I guess, rejection in general) to want to, or be able to, risk rejection by aiming to get their stuff out to as big an audience as they could.
I wrote my whole answer and won't re-write it. The short answer is that I can't even imagine anyone who writes anything being "afraid of rejection". I know that people who write, say, fiction may have to worry more about who likes or doesn't like what they write. Maybe because I don't write fiction it's easy for me to say I don't care who does or doesn't like what I write. That isn't even really the point of this post, though. Here's my "spin-off" point:
It always kind of amazes me how many people have a tendency to put their own insecurities (or even "over-securities" on other people. On the one hand, I have not lost site of the fact that something like online discussions are just that and are essentially for the purpose of discussion. On the other hand, it can be both eye-opening and kind of aggravating to run into (yet again, and whether online or in "real life") how often people just automatically put their insecurities, over-securities, or whatever else on others. It's common and understandable, up to a point, that people so often tend to think that everyone else is like they are (at least in some ways). Where many people need to be far more careful (again, online or in "real life", which are (or should be) the same thing) is in being too quick to just automatically assume that everyone else is just like they are. It's good, of course, to recognize that so many of us are the same in so many ways. Where people slip up, however, is to make that jump to thinking that because we human beings have so many things in common we must "all be exactly alike". We're not. We have things in common with others. Then, however, we are individuals.
An interesting thing can be that there are people who may be more likely to want/need to make thesmelves feel better by believing that everyone else has the same weaknesses that they do; while the very same people may be more inclined to recognize the difference between them and others when it comes to something they believe is a positive trait/behavior of their own. For example, the person who views his own marketing approaches/efforts with his own writing (and has seen results from his approach) may be likely to assume that anyone who has not used that same approach is somehow lacking something. Again, in something like an online discussion it's generally a good thing for all kinds of people to kick in all kinds of things. That makes for a good discussion.
Whether it's with writing or anything else, people need to keep in mind that just because they have many things in common with someone else, or even because they have only one thing in common with someone else, that doesn't mean that the "someone else" is the same as they are.
People who don't have a good perspective of, or the different types of, something like rejection have a problem. Not everyone has that problem. Writers know how rejection works and pretty much have a good grasp on the reality that not everyone is going to like their work. Also, rejection of writing isn't even about someone's not liking the writing. A good part of the time the timing and/or type of writing is the reason a piece of writing won't fit well somewhere. It's easy enough for me to say/think that I don't care who likes or doesn't like any of the stuff I've written online. I've never been "emotionally attached" to the kind of stuff that does well in search engines. There are all kinds of different "set-ups" for writing online, and the matter of marketing and/or having something rejected isn't even factor with some of those "set-ups". So, the fear-of-rejection thing was pretty much about writing that people do on their own with the hopes of gaining a big audience.
While I understand that just because I don't happen to care about who does/doesn't like something I've written there certainly are people who think of their own writing differently. (I'm not one of those people who think that everyone else is the same as I am just because they happen to also write online.)
People tend to do two different things when it comes to what they think about others. Some, for example, think that because they do something (like worry too much, lie too freely, dislike one or another group of people or things , fear rejection- whatever....) that everyone else does those same things.
Without getting more into how and what things go on in online discussions, and without getting into a whole big thing about all the different kinds of things people sometimes do when it comes to their thinking/behavior in offline conversations/relationships; the answer to so many things that people discuss, wonder about, and generally focus on in one setting or another, is so often....
""I am not you and/or not in your situation, and you are not me and/or in my situation".
As I've said, it's harmless and understandable that people throw out all kinds of ideas in an online discussion. It's just that that thing about assuming the worst, the weakest, or most flawed about other people is a far more toxic thing than many people realize.
The question-in-question specifically asked about "taking risks" with approaches to getting more visibility. The same question could have been, "Why don't you do more to market your stuff than you?" or "Are you doing as much marketing of your stuff as you could be - and if not why not?" Instead, built right into that question (unimportant as such an online-discussion question may be) was the thing about taking risks.
My "Thing" is this (online or in "real life"): Before building into questions/concerns some psychological/emotional flaw/weakness ask the simple and clean question first. That's all. Everything people do in life is not the result of some psychological/emotional weakness/flaw. Believing it is is, in itself, a flaw/weakness (from which, by the way, only some people, and certainly not all, suffer).
This long post "for the sake of posting something new" is actually not a matter of just rambling on and on about someone suggesting that writers may be afraid to take risks out of fear of rejection. It's really about raising the issue of people being so free to assume the worst, the weakest, and/or the least of other people. The reason I've raised this in this post is that, since long before there was an Internet, I've had a real "Thing" about people in (primarily) one of two groups (very elderly people and children) having others assume the worst, weakest, and or least about them. Since my most immediate aims with this blog (and any "surrounding" pages) are focused on very elderly people; but since I'm not yet prepared to adequately get into the broad picture related to people in that group; I thought that just raising the matter of "assuming the worst and weakest" when we don't understand why someone else does/doesn't do something might be a good (although admittedly poorly structured) starting point.
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