How The Internet Makes Defensive Writers of Us All

“Drive as though everyone around you is an absolute idiot.” 

That was my driving instructor’s advice to me. While starting to drive years ago, I learned that driving wasn’t only about the road rules. It was also about anticipating danger – whether it was slowing down in the rain, or by keeping a safe distance from the car ahead.

You may recognise this as defensive driving – a tactic we learn to keep us safer on the roads. 

But there is such a thing as defensive writing. And recently, I realised I was doing it. 

Like defensive driving, my defensive writing was to protect me from danger. In my case, that danger was around criticism online as I wrote this blog. 

As I wrote my draft, I would scrutinise each sentence and ask myself, Is someone going to question this? Could someone poke holes in that word choice? What if someone has much more expertise in this than me?

At first, I thought I was precise. But eventually, very little writing was happening at all.

Instead, I caught myself researching every word to make sure it echoed what others had said before me. I was endlessly hedging sentences with terms like “somewhat”, “to some extent” and “often”. And I toned down my flourishes so that I wouldn’t annoy anyone.

Getting words down was like pulling teeth. And if I got anything written, I’d read back and feel disconnected from it, because it didn’t sound like me anymore, or even my ideas.

My writing was no longer driven by what I wanted to say, but by the fear of saying something wrong.

And, unfortunately, it’s not an unfounded fear. 

It’s always been true that writing your opinion can invite negative backlash. But there’s something about online comment sections that brings out the worst in people.

Some people comment to pick a fight or insult you. Others miss your point or don’t understand the nature of the format (“Why hasn’t your 900-word article covered every detail about this topic?”).

Of course, I’ve received criticism that’s constructive and well-meant. I am wrong as much as the next guy. But, whatever the circumstance, the possibility of being publicly critiqued can cause fear in itself.

And once you think about it, that’s the climate of our times, isn’t it?

It’s become a truism that the internet is full of hostiles and idiots (so they say), making it critical to “say the right thing” at all times. The permanent nature of the internet makes it even more so.

It makes me wonder how many people are being misinterpreted, or aren’t speaking at all, because of this antagonistic online environment. What is that doing to the nature of our debates with each other? Is it any wonder so many of us religiously avoid the comment sections?

I don’t have a simple answer to this problem of defensive writing. But I am learning some ways to orient myself when potential criticism makes me unable to work.

My focus is on clarifying my ideas. It’s not on rebutting every possible objection.

Research is all well and good. But at some point, I need to close myself off to other voices and concentrate on what I want to say. Not what that much more qualified blogger said over there.

Later, I can go back and clarify what I’m saying. Not to downplay my points, but to ensure my engaged reader is still tracking with my train of thought.

As Stephen King said,

           Write with the door closed. Rewrite with the door open.

Hedging my arguments should be a choice, not a tic.

If there’s a chance my reader will misunderstand me, I need to add information to help them understand. That may include adding a hedging word like “sometimes” or “often” or “generally”.

But this ought to be a conscious decision to make the piece stronger. Not so I avoid sticking my neck out too far.

Some readers will disagree with me, regardless of what I do.

If I’m writing to someone who’s reading in bad faith, I’m in a losing battle.

Stephen Pinker’s insightful paper, titled “Why Academics Stink at Writing“, explored how academics tend to write weakly because they assume their audience will nitpick every detail.

He wrote:

If someone tells you that Liz wants to move out of Seattle because it’s a rainy city, you don’t interpret him as claiming that it rains there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just because he didn’t qualify his statement with relatively rainy or somewhat rainy. 

Any adversary who is intellectually unscrupulous enough to give the least charitable reading to an unhedged statement will find an opening to attack the writer in a thicket of hedged ones anyway.

Yes, it’s my responsibility to write coherently. But even if I write the most persuasive arguments in the most precise way possible, readers still will exist who won’t want a bar of it.

I can try to win those people over, but when I do, my work gets dumber, denser and defensive. These readers may not be my audience, and I can’t fixate on their criticisms.

Abandoning defensive writing doesn’t mean I dismiss or ignore the opinion of others.

But it does mean that I shift my posture away from self-consciousness. 

For now, I remind myself that creative work is about communicating an idea. It cannot be about “avoiding saying something wrong”.