89. Are You Gatekeeping Your Writing Work?

If you’re a novelist or fiction writer keeping your work tucked away, convinced you’re “not ready” to share it, this episode is for you. We’re talking about what it really means to gatekeep your writing—and how doing so might be holding your creative growth hostage.

I’ll unpack the mindset behind working in a silo and the fears that keep writers protecting their stories a little too tightly. I'll share what gatekeeping your work is costing you, and what might be possible if you let your story breathe, share it with trusted eyes, and step into the next stage of your writing journey.

Tune in to learn more.

🎙️Nicole Meier: Website | Substack

Transcript

THE WHOLE WRITER EP 89 - Are You Gatekeeping Your Writing Work?

[00:00:00] Nicole Meier: If you're working in a silo right now, if you're gatekeeping your work, I want you to know you're not protecting your work, you are protecting yourself. But I want you to sit with the question, what is gatekeeping your work costing you? What might be possible if you let it breathe?

[00:00:28] Nicole Meier: Welcome to the whole writer, A place where we talk about what it means to show up as a writer, not just a better writer or a more productive writer or a published writer, but a whole one. Someone who's grounded in their voice, in their community, in their creative path. Even when the world tells them to hustle, compare, or conform.

[00:00:49] Nicole Meier: I'm Nicole Meyer, a multi published author and book coach who believes that nurturing the person behind the page is just as important as refining the words on it. Each week we'll explore the terrain of writing life with honesty, warmth, and practical wisdom, creating space for you to write from a place of wholeness rather than depletion.

[00:01:09] Nicole Meier: Whether you're drafting your first manuscript or publishing your fifth book, you'll find conversation and companionship for the journey here. So settle in, bring your questions and your curiosity, and let's discover what it means to write and live with authenticity and purpose. Well, hi there, writers.

[00:01:30] Nicole Meier: Welcome back to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today inside this solo episode. Today I want to talk about something I've been noticing more and more in my work with fiction writers. It's the pattern of gatekeeping, not gatekeeping in the traditional sense of keeping other people out, but gatekeeping your own work, keeping it locked away, keeping it to yourself, working in complete isolation.

[00:01:56] Nicole Meier: And I get it. I really do. There's something that feels safe about keeping your riding close. About not sharing until it's perfect, about waiting for the right moment, the right level of achievement, the right external validation before you let anyone see what you've been working on. But here's what I'm seeing, this safety is costing you.

[00:02:17] Nicole Meier: It's costing you growth in your craft. It's costing you the resilience you need as a writer, and honestly, it's costing you your wellbeing. I know, right? Those are some weighty statements to sit with, but that's why I'm here on the whole writer to talk about your wellbeing as a creative behind the written work.

[00:02:39] Nicole Meier: So today I'm going to share what happens when you gate keep your work the real costs, not just the missed opportunities. And I want to share a story about a writer I worked with recently that illuminated this for me. All right. Let's start with something I hear all the time. I'm still revising. I'm not ready yet.

[00:02:58] Nicole Meier: And look, this revision is essential. It's where the real writing happens, but there's a difference between productive revision and what I call the revision loop, where you're revising indefinitely, constantly finding new things to fix, never quite getting to a place where you feel ready to share. For many writers, the revision loop isn't actually about perfectionism.

[00:03:20] Nicole Meier: It's about avoidance. Again, we've all been there, so there's no shame. But here's the thing, as long as you're still revising, you get to stay in this comfortable space of being a quote writer, working on something. You're productive, you're dedicated, you're doing the work, but you never have to face the vulnerability of being a writer with a finished thing.

[00:03:44] Nicole Meier: You never have to face feedback. You never have to face the possibility that it might not be as good as you hoped, or that it might need more work than you thought, or that someone might not understand what you're trying to do. I'm gonna stop right here. I'm gonna share something tender. It's not uncommon for a writer to get on a discovery call with me and shed a few tears as they come to the realization they've been doing this very thing and it's been holding them back.

[00:04:13] Nicole Meier: I'm here to hold space for you as a creative. When this happens, this is valid and it's real, but you don't have to live in that space forever. Let me explain more. The revision loop feels productive, but it's actually a form of creative self-protection. And I wanna be really gentle here because this makes total sense.

[00:04:34] Nicole Meier: Of course, you wanna protect yourself, of course, you want your work to be ready. Of course, you wanna feel confident before you share who doesn't. And here's the wellness issue. Chronic incompletion creates anxiety. I'm gonna say that again. Chronic incomp completion creates anxiety. When you never finish, when you never share, when you never get to the other side of vulnerability, you're living in a state of perpetual almost, and that almost is exhausting.

[00:05:06] Nicole Meier: It keeps you stuck in potential instead of reality. One of the writers I worked with put it perfectly, she said, and I'm paraphrasing here, I thought I was being productive by revising so much, but really I was just avoiding being done Sound familiar because done. Means visible, done means vulnerable. Done means you have to find out if it works, and staying in that revision loop means you never have to find out

[00:05:37] Nicole Meier: writers. If what we're talking about today is resonating with you, this idea of honoring both your craft knowledge and your creative intuition, that's exactly the kind of work I do with writers inside my coaching and editing services. Whether you're looking for a big picture, manuscript evaluation, in depth, developmental edits, or ongoing monthly coaching, my goal is always to help you find clarity, confidence, and momentum in a way that feels creative and authentic to your voice.

[00:06:09] Nicole Meier: You can learn more about these options@nicolemeyer.com.

[00:06:16] Nicole Meier: Okay. So let's transition into what I wanna talk about next, which is the topic of isolation. When you work completely alone, when you're not part of any writing community, when you're not sharing your work with anyone, something happens, you start to develop a really distorted view of what writing is supposed to look like.

[00:06:35] Nicole Meier: Think about it this way. If you only consume published polished books and you never see other writers' messy middles, you start to think that everyone else's process is smooth. Everyone else's first drafts are better than yours. That struggling means you're doing it wrong. It's like only eating one food group, for lack of a better analogy.

[00:06:56] Nicole Meier: You become creatively malnourished. And I wanna be clear, I'm not talking about joining communities to network or build a platform. That's a whole other topic, and that's not what this is about. This is about creative nutrition. This is about getting the input you need to grow as a writer. When you're part of a writing community, whether that's a critique group, a workshop, an online space where writers share their struggles, you get to see everyone else's process and it's messy.

[00:07:26] Nicole Meier: You get to see that. Published authors also have terrible first drafts. You get to see that revision is universal. That doubt is normal, that your quote, broken draft is actually just a draft. This is essential information. This is information that helps you keep going, that helps you understand that you're not uniquely struggling, you're just writing.

[00:07:49] Nicole Meier: But when you gate keep your work, when you stay isolated, you don't get this reality check. You're comparing your messy middle to everyone else's polished final product, and that comparison is killing your creative wellbeing. Joining a writing group, side note here, this group can be just two people. Helps you understand that you're actually a normal writer, not a broken one.

[00:08:11] Nicole Meier: I've spoken about this before, both on my Substack and on the podcast. That's what community does. It normalizes the struggle. It shows you that what feels like failure is actually just process. So let me go back to this writer I've been working with. He's talented, deeply committed to his body of work, and has this big dream of landing a major book contract.

[00:08:35] Nicole Meier: Here's what was happening. He was working completely alone. He'd been working on his manuscript for years. Actually. He'd revised it multiple times and he kept saying, once I have an agent, then I'll start sharing my work. Once I have a book deal, then I'll think about community. Once I'm officially published, then I'll put myself out there.

[00:08:52] Nicole Meier: He was waiting for permission, waiting for this big reveal before validation, and what I realized as we talked. Was that he wasn't just limiting his opportunities, he was limiting his growth. So we started talking about what it might look like to share his voice, not to build a platform, but to practice his craft in community.

[00:09:15] Nicole Meier: What if he joined a critique group and let others see his chapters? What if he wrote a few essays exploring the themes in his novel, just to practice putting his ideas into the world? What if he shared his writing journey with a small group of trusted readers? I could see the resistance come up immediately.

[00:09:33] Nicole Meier: But what if it's not good enough? What if people don't get it? What if I share and it doesn't matter? What if it's a waste of time? And my answer is always, what if you share and learn something that makes your manuscript better? What if you share and discover which parts of your voice really resonate?

[00:09:50] Nicole Meier: What if you share and you build the resilience you're gonna need when you're going after that book Deal. Sharing your work in small, low stakes ways isn't about building an audience. It's about building you, building your skills as a writer, building your resilience, building your understanding of how your work lands with readers.

[00:10:12] Nicole Meier: Gatekeeping costs you, not opportunities, but growth. Now, I know some of you are thinking, but I have imposter syndrome. That's why I can't share. And yes, I hear this all the time. Everyone has imposter syndrome. It's normal. And I'm not here to just say, push through it. I wanna offer you a different way of thinking about this.

[00:10:33] Nicole Meier: Imposter syndrome thrives in isolation. It thrives when you gate keep your work because when you never share, you never get to reality. Test your fears. You imagine rejection without ever experiencing what most feedback is. Actually, here's what's working really well, here's what needs work, which is actionable.

[00:10:54] Nicole Meier: It's useful, which is not the devastating rejection you've been imagining. The antidote to imposter syndrome isn't confidence, it's connection to reality. I'm gonna say that again. The antidote to imposter syndrome isn't confidence, it's connection to reality. When you share your work in gentle low stakes ways, you start to learn that your fears are bigger than the reality.

[00:11:20] Nicole Meier: You start to learn that feedback is actually helpful, not harmful. You start to learn that people respond to your voice even when your work isn't perfect. But you can't learn any of this in isolation. You can't learn it by gatekeeping. So here's what I want to leave you with today. If you're working in a silo right now, if you're gatekeeping your work, I want you to know you're not protecting your work.

[00:11:45] Nicole Meier: You are protecting yourself from vulnerability, from the fear of being seen, from the possibility of feedback that confirms your deepest fears. And I get it. That protection feels necessary. It feels like the only way to keep going. Again, here's what I've noticed in all my years working with fiction writers.

[00:12:04] Nicole Meier: The ones who stay hidden don't just miss opportunities. They miss growth. Their manuscripts stay stuck at a certain level because they're only getting feedback from themselves. Their resilience stays fragile because it's never tested gently. Their sense of themselves as writers stays theoretical because they never practice the identity.

[00:12:29] Nicole Meier: You don't need a book deal to be a writer in community. You don't need an agent to share your voice. You don't need to be perfect to deserve feedback. You deserve to write in community right now. Today. You deserve feedback that helps your manuscript become what it's meant to be. You deserve to know that your voice matters before some gatekeeper tells you that it does.

[00:12:53] Nicole Meier: Alright, what is one small way you could let your work breathe this month? Think about it. Could you share one chapter with a trusted reader? Could you join one writing community, not to network, but to normalize the struggle? Could you write something small that explores your novels themes, and share it somewhere just to practice finishing and then releasing.

[00:13:17] Nicole Meier: You don't have to do all of these things. You don't have to do any of these right away, but I want you to sit with the question, what is gatekeeping your work costing you? What might be possible if you let it breathe. Alright, my friends, that's what I wanted to share with you today. I hope it was helpful.

[00:13:37] Nicole Meier: I hope it gave you something to think about. If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. Send me a message, reply to this week's substack newsletter. Find me on social media. Let me know what came up for you. As you listened and remember, your work doesn't have to be perfect to be worthy of being seen.

[00:13:55] Nicole Meier: You don't have to wait for permission. You just have to be willing to take one small step out of isolation. Remember, I'm cheering for you. Keep writing, keep growing, and keep letting your work breathe. Until next time, I'll see you on the whole rider. If you're craving support in integrating everything we've talked about today, if you want to strengthen your craft without losing the heart of your story, I'd love to walk alongside you through manuscript evaluations, developmental edits, and monthly book coaching.

[00:14:27] Nicole Meier: I help writers like you to create stories that feel whole and alive. You can find all the details@nicolemeyer.com or at the link in the show notes. And of course, if you just want to keep learning together, stay tuned for more episodes like this one.

[00:14:48] Nicole Meier: If you want to check out my coaching programs for fiction writers. Visit Nicole meyer.com. That's M-E-I-E-R. And if you like this episode, I'd love you to take a minute to leave a rating and review for this podcast. This will help more writers like you to discover the show and to get going on their writing journey.

[00:15:08] Nicole Meier: Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, happy writing everyone.