The Fear the Story Lands Flat, and Doing It Anyway (Module: Handing It Over)
okay so. last lesson was pairing photos with the words. this one is less of a skill and more of a confession, and it's the lesson i've been sort of building toward the whole class without saying it out loud.
here's the thing. the actual hardest part of this whole process isn't finding the record, or fixing the timeline, or figuring out where great-grandma's photos went. it's hitting send. or hitting print. or handing someone a page and watching their face while they read it.
i still struggle with this. bad. i have a whole etsy shop sitting half-finished because i can't get past the thought that nobody would want what i made. it maps directly onto the family history stuff. i'll write four pages about my ancestors and then just, not tell anyone. let it sit in a document. safer there.
so let's talk about it plainly, and then let's do it anyway.
why the fear shows up
it's not really about your writing. it's about the fact that once it's out of your head and on the page, it can be wrong. someone can say "that's not how i remember it." someone can just not care, which honestly stings worse than being corrected. or, the quiet one, nobody says anything at all, and you sit there wondering if it landed or if it just kind of disappeared.
i had a story i put in a facebook history group once. two likes. i spiraled about it for basically a whole day, convinced it meant the story didn't matter. then a stranger commented that it reminded them of their own grandfather, and that one comment undid the whole spiral. one person. that's all it took.
that's the trade you're making when you hand something over. you're risking a flat landing for the chance of that one comment.
the aidan story
my friend aidan swears up and down that he can't write. says it every time, like a reflex. we were driving back from a DI run a while back, both of us in my car, and he started telling me about his grandpa's habit of hiding candy in his truck's glove box so the grandkids would find it. he wasn't trying to write anything. he was just talking.
i typed it up at a red light. just grabbed my phone and typed while we sat there. it's one of the best pieces i've collected, genuinely, better than a lot of stuff i've labored over myself. and aidan still says he can't write. he said it again after i showed it to him, actually, even holding the proof in his hand.
i tell that story a lot because it's the clearest example i've got that the fear and the actual output have almost nothing to do with each other. aidan was terrified of writing and produced something great. he just didn't call it writing. he called it talking in a car.
what to do about the fear, practically
you can't think your way out of it. you have to build a small enough exit that you take it before you talk yourself out of it. a few ways i do that:
pick one person, not "everyone." don't hand the story to the whole family group chat first. pick the one cousin who'll actually read it. send it to them alone. lower stakes, and you get a real reaction instead of silence from twenty people who saw it and scrolled past.
say the nervous thing out loud before you hand it over. something like "i wrote this fast, don't expect much" or "this might not be totally right, tell me if you remember it different." it does two things. it lowers your own pressure, and it invites correction instead of dreading it. correction means someone cared enough to read closely.
set a deadline that isn't "when it's perfect." perfect isn't a date on a calendar, it just isn't coming. pick an actual day. sunday dinner. a birthday. the day you print the photo book. hand it over then, done or not.
expect the two-likes response, and let it be fine. most of the time the reaction is quiet. maybe a "thanks for this" text, nothing more. that's not failure. people absorb things slowly, especially family stuff. the stranger's comment on my post came a full day later. give it room.
short pieces are lower risk anyway, which is one more reason i like them. four sentences is a family history, i've said that before and i mean it. a shorter piece is less to have judged, and it's usually the better piece regardless.
one real caution
if you're handing over something that includes someone else's private stuff, an addiction, a divorce, a death nobody's talked about openly, check with that person first if they're alive to ask. not because the story isn't true. because handing it over without warning can feel like an ambush, even when you meant it kindly. a quick heads-up text goes a long way.
before next time
pick one piece you've written this whole course and send it to exactly one person before we meet again. not the group chat. one person. tell me what they said, even if what they said was nothing 🫠