Don’t Encourage Me
Unless
You Clear Your Schedule

There is a specific kind of social danger that people do not warn you about, and that is accidentally giving me permission.

I do not mean legal permission. I am not waiting outside your house with a clipboard and a zoning variance. I mean the much more dangerous kind, where I have been quietly doing some strange little thing in private for months or years because I have already decided that nobody wants to hear about it, and then one day I cautiously allow a single specimen into public view.

Maybe I post one story. One.

Not the collected works. Not the director’s cut. Not the annotated edition with maps. One small, carefully selected example, released into the world with the emotional posture of someone placing a baby bird on a branch and immediately regretting every life choice that led to this moment. Then somebody likes it. That is where the trouble begins.

Because I am not capable of receiving positive feedback in moderation. I do not see one like and think, “How nice, that was well received.” I see one like and my brain immediately convenes an emergency session to determine whether this constitutes official authorization to release the archives. The answer is always yes.

You have to understand that, prior to this moment, I was exercising restraint. Considerable restraint. Heroic restraint, frankly. There were drafts. There were notes. There were abandoned fragments. There were things I wrote at two in the morning and things I wrote in the grocery store parking lot and things I remembered in the shower and had to repeat out loud until I found my phone. There were entire categories of material I had judged unfit for civilian consumption.

Then you clicked a little heart. Congratulations. You have opened the vault. I do not know how to “share a little more.” That phrase has no meaning to me. If I have shown you one piece of something I care about and you respond positively, I do not become cautiously encouraged. I become a museum curator who has just discovered that the building has unlimited gallery space.

You liked the one story? Wonderful. Here are seven more. Also, while we are here, I have three unfinished ones, a folder of notes, an alternate ending, a character sketch, a related anecdote from 1998, and a thing I never posted because I thought it was too weird but now that you have demonstrated poor judgment, I think you are ready.

This is how five novels happen. Nobody asked for five novels. I know that. You know that. Yet there they are, stacked metaphorically on your chest while I stand over you saying, “This one is actually shorter!”

The problem is that I am usually my own first and most aggressive censor. I will make something, decide it is too niche, too strange, too self-indulgent, too specific, too much, and quietly put it away. I can sit on entire continents of material because I have already completed the rejection process on everyone else’s behalf. Very efficient. Saves time.

Then somebody reacts warmly to one tiny piece, and suddenly all those internal border checkpoints collapse.

This is not confidence, exactly. Confidence would be much healthier. Confidence would say, “I made something I like, and I am comfortable sharing it.” What I have is more like conditional flood control. The dam is holding until someone downstream says, “Hey, nice river.” That is not a compliment, it is an infrastructure failure.

And the really unfair part is that the person who encouraged me usually has no idea what they have done. They thought they were being pleasant. They thought they were clicking a button. They thought perhaps they were supporting creativity.

Poor fools.

They did not realize I had been standing behind that button with both hands on a lever marked RELEASE EVERYTHING.

There is always a moment when I can feel the transition happen. I have shared one thing and received some sign of approval, and then my brain immediately starts flipping through inventory. If they liked that, they might like this. If they liked this, then surely they would appreciate the related thing. And if they appreciate the related thing, it would be irresponsible not to provide context.

Context is where the fatalities occur. I have context…I have so much fucking context.

Nothing I have ever done exists alone. It has ancestors, cousins, abandoned prototypes, sequels, side quests, thematic companions, and an obscure early version that nobody but me has seen because I changed one word in 2017 and have been thinking about it ever since.

You liked my little story.

Now you know the lore.

This is why people need to be careful around me with encouragement. I am not asking anyone to be less kind. Quite the opposite. Kindness is wonderful. Positive feedback is lovely. I simply think it should come with informed consent.

“Before you press Like, you should be shown a warning.”

Because once I decide you are safe to share with, the category changes. You are no longer “person who saw a thing.” You are now “person who has demonstrated interest.” These are not remotely the same job. The first requires seconds. The second requires scheduling.

So please, by all means, encourage me. Tell me you liked it. Tell me it was funny. Tell me you want to see more.

Just understand that “more” is not a controlled substance in this house. More is a weather system.

And if you really, genuinely mean it, clear your afternoon.