Who are you writing for — really?
On internalized critique and the echo of white-centered writing education.
When I ask writers who they’re writing for, most answer quickly.
“Myself.”
“My community.”
“Whoever needs it.”
But the real answer doesn’t live in the mouth. It lives in the body.
I read manuscripts every week. And in almost every opening, I see the same pattern.
Note: By manuscripts, I mean anything you’re drafting with intention — novels, yes, but also essays, articles, personal narratives, even poetry. Anywhere you’re putting your truth on the page and someone will read it. The protection shows up the same way regardless of form.
The sharpest sentence being softened.
The boldest claim being explained.
The most honest line being trimmed or removed altogether.
The writing isn’t weak. That’s rarely the case.
The writer is protecting themselves.
The reader you’re writing for isn’t some abstract future audience.
They’re internalized.
They’re the workshop instructor who said, “Make it more universal.”
The publishing standard that rewarded distance over specificity.
The English classroom where clarity meant conformity.
The white-centered writing education that framed certain voices as “too much.”
The critique was real.
It happened in a specific moment — maybe once, maybe repeatedly — and the body registered it as a threat.
Someone in authority told you (directly or indirectly) that your authentic voice was wrong. Too direct. Too angry. Too specific. Too much.
The consequences were real.
Lower grades. Rejection letters. Workshop silence. Being told your work “isn’t quite ready yet” without explanation of what would make it ready.
And your nervous system adapted.
Because the nervous system’s job is survival, not art.
It learned: honesty has a cost. Specificity creates risk. Boldness invites critique.
And it developed a solution: soften before someone else demands it.
This isn’t happening on a conscious level. This isn’t a choice the writer is making while drafting.
This is protection playing out on the page.
Here’s what this protection looks like in the actual writing.
The opening loses tension.
Instead of starting with the sharpest truth, the work eases in with context. Background. Setup. The real hook appears in chapter 3 instead of chapter 1.
The voice becomes slightly explanatory.
The narrator starts justifying claims before making them. Adding qualifiers. Building cases for assertions that don’t need defending.
“I think...” “It seems...” “Perhaps...” “In some ways...”
Specificity gives way to qualification.
The cultural detail that would make the scene vivid gets generalized. The AAVE dialogue gets “cleaned up.” The specific reference that Black readers would recognize immediately gets removed because “everybody won’t get it.”
The urgency dissipates.
The forward momentum slows. The reader starts skimming instead of leaning in. The writer wonders why the pacing feels off even though nothing technically wrong is happening.
This isn’t because the writer lacks craft skills.
It’s because their nervous system intervened before the page could fully speak.
I can usually see this within five pages of any manuscript.
The moment where the writer started protecting themselves instead of creating fully.
Once you recognize it, you can’t unsee it.
This isn’t about bravery.
Let me be clear: writers don’t soften their lines because they’re insecure or afraid or not committed enough to their work.
They soften them because they’ve internalized a reader whose approval once mattered.
That reader may not even be in the room anymore.
The workshop ended years ago. The classroom is long closed. The rejection came from an editor who’s moved on to other manuscripts.
But their echo is still present.
The nervous system doesn’t distinguish between past threat and present safety.
It remembers: boldness = danger. Softness = survival.
So even when you’re alone at your desk, writing for yourself, the protection mechanism activates.
You write a sharp sentence.
Then immediately — before you consciously decide to — you soften it.
This happens in the micro-moment between impulse and execution.
The thought: “She destroyed everything we built.”
The protection: “She seemed to destroy…”
The thought: “White people fear Black authority.”
The protection: “Some people seem uncomfortable with…”
The softening happens so fast you don’t even notice you’re doing it.
Until someone like me reads your opening pages and asks: where’s the sentence you wrote first, before you made it safer? This often results in a confused look. The reason I can ask this so naturally is because I’ve caught myself doing this on many occasions.
Here’s what I’ve learned from reading hundreds of opening chapters:
Every writer is writing for two audiences simultaneously.
The stated reader: The actual person who will hold this book. Your community. The people who need this story or argument or truth.
The internalized reader: The voice of critique that taught you to protect. The writing workshop. The classroom. The publishing standard. The white gaze.
And in most manuscripts, the internalized reader is running the show.
It’s not that you want them to.
It’s simply because protection doesn’t ask for permission.
The nervous system sees a potential threat and responds before your conscious mind can say “chill out, that reader isn’t relevant anymore.”
You think you’re writing for yourself.
But the opening pages reveal you’re writing for approval you don’t even want.
This is the pattern I see every single week.
And once you see it in your own work, everything shifts.
Before you revise your next paragraph, ask yourself:
Whose critique am I anticipating in this sentence?
Not whose approval do you want.
Whose criticism are you preemptively defending against?
Is that voice still relevant?
Is that person still in your life? Do they still hold power over your work? Are they even part of your intended audience?
Or is it an echo?
A voice from the past that your nervous system still treats as a present-day threat.
Most of the time, when I ask writers this question, they realize:
The reader they’re protecting themselves from either doesn’t exist or isn’t relevant anymore.
The consequence they’re avoiding is no longer real.
The approval they’re seeking is from someone whose opinion they don’t actually respect or care about.
The protection is habitual, not necessary.
And habits can be changed.
When you write for the internalized critic instead of your actual reader, your opening loses the very thing that would make someone want to read further.
The tension.
The specificity.
The honest voice that says: I see something you might not have seen, and I’m going to show it to you directly.
That’s what opening pages are supposed to do.
Not ease the reader in gently.
Not explain why they should care.
Not prove you’re qualified to say this.
Hook them with the truth you’re brave enough to state plainly.
But you can’t write that opening if you’re protecting yourself from a reader who doesn’t matter.
You have to know who you’re actually writing for.
Not in theory.
In your nervous system.
Because the body doesn’t lie.
The mouth can say “I’m writing for my community.”
But the page reveals: you’re writing for the workshop instructor who dismissed your first chapter.
And that’s the work.
Not just craft revision.
Nervous system retraining. Shadow work. Healing.
Learning to write from a place of safety instead of protection.
Understanding that the readers who need your work — who will recognize themselves in your specificity, who will feel seen by your boldness — they’re not the ones who taught you to soften.
The people who benefit from your authentic voice are not the people who punished it.
Once you internalize that, your opening pages change.
This is what I mean when I say most writing problems aren’t simply craft problems.
You can study story structure. Master pacing. Nail voice and dialogue and scene work.
But if your nervous system is protecting you from an imaginary threat, there ain’t a craft book in the world that can save the opening.
Because the protection will show up before the craft does. Every. Single. Time.
This is shadow work for writers.
Excavating the internalized voices that shape your choices before you consciously make them.
Identifying whose approval you’re seeking (and whether you even want it).
Recognizing where the softening happens — and why.
Then rewriting without the protection.
Not recklessly.
Not without craft or care.
But without preemptive self-censorship.
Without your nervous system intervening to save you from consequences that aren’t real anymore.
That’s what creates opening pages that actually land.
Not perfect craft.
Craft in service of truth instead of protection.
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself — if you can feel the places where you’ve softened before someone else could criticize — you’re already halfway there.
Awareness is the first layer.
Seeing the pattern changes how you write going forward.
But integration requires practice.
Learning to write without the internalized critic takes more than intellectual understanding.
It takes excavation.
That’s what Write From the Wound is for.
Seven days of identifying the voices you’re protecting yourself from. The inherited patterns that shaped your relationship to boldness. The nervous system responses that activate before you consciously choose.
Then learning to write without them.
Not by force. Not by trying harder.
By understanding where the protection came from — and choosing something different.
This is the work beneath the work.
The shadow work that makes craft actually usable.
Because you can’t write your sharpest truth if your body is protecting you from consequences that aren’t real anymore.
Write From the Wound is seven days of excavating what’s really blocking your voice.
Daily emails with tools for nervous system awareness, pattern recognition and rewriting without protection.
The cost is $27 until Feb 17th. Then the price increases to $47.
Starts immediately when you join.
This isn’t craft advice.
This is the work that makes craft advice actually land.
Join here: Write From the Wound
Your opening pages are waiting for you to write them without the internalized critic.
Let’s excavate what’s in the way.
Thank you, I need to be reminded again and again——don't soften. I just wrote a blog post that I' proud of, but dammit, after reading your post, I see immediately where I softened, where I could have been specific. My voice veered into the universal. Thank you, Lakeisha.
Reading this took me back to being an undergrad at a PWI. Being the only Black one in an all white creative writing class was interesting. They always had something to say about my writing, but I never changed it because it’s my voice and I wasn’t writing for them anyway. Luckily the professor, though white, understood what it meant to run an authentic type of workshop class. More people need to read this and really start unpacking why they edit the way they do.