I came home to a football-size bubble on the kitchen ceiling. It jiggled when I touched it, swollen with water from a leak I couldn’t see. I was still trying to decide what to do when my phone vibrated with an email. A single sentence from a stranger: Men abuse women because of women like you.
Earlier that week, I’d published a piece about leaving a toxic relationship for a job in Death Valley National Park. It was very personal, even for a personal essay. The initial response was a flood of kindness, which I naively thought would last. It didn’t. The email led me to the comments, the messages on Instagram, Facebook. The bubble on the ceiling expanded, the pressure building.
I called family members, friends. Well, it does come with the territory, one of them said.
The circumstances vary, but this experience is one shared by many writers. We dream of landing bylines and book deals, but few resources prepare us for the attention—and occasionally harassment—that comes with writing for a wide audience. You are not a celebrity, but you still occupy a space where hundreds, thousands, even millions of people can judge you.
In the era of the personal brand, the pressures are even more acute. Being a writer in 2026 means marketing yourself as a public figure. Rachel Taff, whose debut novel, Paper Cut, came out this year, told me about investing her own money into a photo shoot for social media and teaching herself to use Canva and TikTok. To promote my own novel, I bought a ring light, a tripod, and a CapCut subscription. I wrote scripts for myself and recited them to a front-facing camera. I didn’t want to feel embarrassed, but I was.
Growing up in New Hampshire, I used to drive through the small town of Cornish in hopes of seeing J.D. Salinger. Sometimes I’d stop at the general store for ice cream and try to work up the nerve to ask about him. But I’d heard stories about visitors asking how to get to his house only to be given fake directions. His solitude was so important that the town protected it.
The archetype of the reclusive literary figure—someone like Thomas Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy—is usually male. I’ve never heard a male writer agonize over the tension between writing and being a public figure. It’s the women around me who are starting Substacks to promote their books and attending to their social media feeds. A male professor I had while I was working on my MFA once told me I should just focus on the work, but having an internet presence has gotten me enough opportunities to justify being there.
