This post was directly inspired by a flurry of Google Site Kit searches that I got a while back that fascinated me, because clearly someone was desperate to know the answer to this. While I doubt said searcher is going to come back months later (I have posts queued out quite far in advance), perhaps someone else is interested in the same thing.

Firstly, “all writers” aren’t anything except writers. You will never find anything that every writer on the planet shares in common because it’s far too vast a field.

But let’s assume that we can divine common threads between a majority of people in this niche. Is it true that writers are insecure and arrogant? Because certainly, these two traits can coincide; in fact, arrogance is very often a cover for insecurity, a way to avoid anyone realizing how deep the Imposter Syndrome goes.

I don’t think it’s a universal, though.

The widespread adoration of writing can give people a big head.

Now, first thing: I am not implying that writing cannot imbue some with a certain level of arrogance. That is true. But, it’s not an inherent quality of writing itself; it has to do with societal perceptions of writing as a measure of intelligence because of its visibility.

I have discussed this in several other posts, including my post about why writers are mean and why writers are pretentious (not quite the same as arrogance, hence why we’re covering this from a different angle).

We are told that writing is proof of general intelligence, not simply a skill like everything else that only has merit in one particular arena of life. Writing, in my opinion, gets this treatment because it’s much easier to see that someone is intelligent if they can express that to others.

When you’re told your whole life that writing means you are very super smart, and seeing everyone idolize famous writers, of course that will infiltrate into your self-concept and poison the well.

Writing is only one of the millions of ways that someone can be intelligent. However, it is also one of the more obvious ones, hence why it can come across as arrogance.

People often conflate confidence and arrogance because of their insecurity.

Despite my dubious claim to fame as one of the rudest authors ever (still intrigued by that, even months later), I would like to say I am not arrogant.

I don’t think I’m better than anyone else because I’m a writer, and I’ve said this multiple times in multiple posts. I discourage any writers from thinking too highly of themselves just because they are good at this one skill. Maybe kill your ego by finding hobbies you suck at, as I have done (and highly recommend).

Anyway, I still contend that I am not arrogant: I am confident. There is a vast chasm between these two traits, but not everyone can tell the difference … because they are threatened by confident people. Especially confident women. It’s easier to deride someone as arrogant than admit to yourself that someone else makes you feel small through their success.

And I have every reason to be confident, and I won’t apologize for that. I’ve written over 2 million words of fiction since 2021; for reference, the Bible is around 780,000 words and was written by dozens of people over centuries. Since 2024, I have published (or am about to publish) five novels and a novella, which is more than most people complete in twice, or even thrice, that period. I have been seriously studying craft since I graduated high school in 2010 and started writing all the way back in 1998.

Even this blog is evidence of my hard work. There are over 150 blog posts on here, published twice a week since November 2024 – while I’m also working a full time job, writing my books, and doing all my normal hobbies. Given that most people abandon their blog after a few months even under optimal conditions, I am an outlier.

Many people, though, have become too accustomed to everyone being meek little flowers about their accomplishments in order to avoid making others feel small. Any acknowledgment of your skill is seen as warrantless bragging or, yes, arrogance. Those who constantly debase themselves are seen as “humble” and “relatable.”

In reality, expecting everyone to be “humble” and “relatable” is really a way for people to avoid the misery of not striving for their goals. It reassures those who haven’t done anything that they’re doing fine, because accomplished people minimize themselves for the non-achiever’s comfort.

It is not bragging for me, or anyone else, to honestly acknowledge our successes. I wasn’t gifted the power to write; I worked hard for it over many, many years.

That is achievable for anyone who is motivated and diligent … which is exactly the opposite of what an arrogant mindset would say.

The arrogance issue arises when someone univeralizes their skill in writing into other domains.

In some cases, arrogance is overgeneralized confidence. Rather than knowing they are good at writing and not so much everything else, they decide that being good at writing means they are good at everything and deserve respect in every domain.

Before I started my Master’s degree, I did a year of a biology undergrad program, but I worked in the Writing Center, which was quite useful for the overall student population. All the other tutors were doing teaching, English, or MFA programs, and I was coming at it from a different discipline. I became the go-to for any sciency stuff and learned along with my students.

There was one English MA student who did not work at the Writing Center but was friends with most of my colleagues. This woman was a top scholar in Bram Stoker despite being a graduate student; she’d published some of the most well-respected recent articles on Dracula and had been asked to speak at academic conferences.

Which is all well and good … except she was a total asshole. Her very essence oozed arrogance in every interaction, including those that had nothing to do with her specialty.

Many such cases in academia, which is why I never pursued it as a career. The backbiting and politicking would have driven me insane.

Highly skilled people who lack a greater perspective assume everyone is impressed by their credentials in every circumstance, which isn’t true. I don’t give a shit if you’re an amazing Bram Stoker scholar when we’re having a general conversation. I’ll rely on you for Dracula factoids, but otherwise, your personality is what matters. If you come across as a total asshole who thinks you’re better than me, then we’re not going to get along.

And I try to live this perspective in everyday life – not only because it makes it easier to make friends, but because I can always learn something from everyone I meet. There are thousands of little influences in my work from those around me, ways they have bent my approach to writing or inspired me to explore a different realm. This is infinitely more valuable than if I decided I knew everything and no one could teach me anything.

The most insecure authors are also those who have done the least work.

Beginner writers and intermediate writers are insecure because they feel their right to the very label is tenuous, dependent on group approval. This is why they avoid feedback, lash out at even the mildest criticism, and tear down other authors.

There’s an interesting thing that happens when you continue doing something you want to. The challenges, disappointments, and setbacks only harden you until you have an unshakable sense of your own skills. You stop feeling you need to prove yourself to anyone because you can look back and see how much you’ve already done.

Even mean-spirited critique doesn’t land as badly because you know it’s not always true. In many cases, you’re able to sort through the bullshit and find whether there is a valid point hidden under the harshness.

For example, multiple people complained that 9 Years Yearning and Pride Before a Fall are slow. They are, indeed, slow, though I figured out (as I noted in my article about pacing) that part of the reason for that criticism was because the chapters were too long.

I won’t defend my creative decisions because ultimately, my reasonings for them don’t matter. If you didn’t like my books, then you don’t have to read them. Leave a mean review; that’s for you and other readers.

But, frankly, I don’t care about a handful of bad reviews. It doesn’t matter. I did what I did, and each book is different so feedback from one book probably won’t apply to the next one. The book is done, and whether people like it is their own issue.

An insecure writer cannot handle that, so they blow up, defending themselves and insisting their work is great no matter how much everyone says otherwise.

Small setbacks can nuke them into orbit because they have no internal barometer of their quality; that discernment relies entirely on outside opinions. With such a small sample size, and given the brain’s natural negative bias, those criticisms can be soul-destroying.

Another reason that this happens is because many writers, especially early on, conflate their work quality with their own self-worth. Saying their work is bad is saying they are bad people, and that’s intolerable. Ego defenses go up, and the writer is fighting for their life in the comments section, ripping apart anyone who disagrees with their creative choices.

That insecurity can read as arrogance if you can’t see the desperate anxiety underneath. These writers haven’t done the work and absorbed the knocks yet; they’re not far enough in their journey to accept anything but adoration.

Writing gives one a massive advantage in winning arguments and articulating points, which can be perceived as (or become) arrogance.

Here’s the other thing that can be read as arrogance – or genuinely morph into it. Someone who has spent thousands of hours learning to communicate well is naturally going to blow the average person out of the water when it comes to literally any written (not spoken) debate or conversation. There’s really no getting around that; it comes with the territory.

Some writers, like me, have professionally studied how to win debates and influence people. I spent seven years studying rhetoric: first in congressional debate and journalism during high school, then in a two-year intensive program during my undergrad (plus a qualitative logic class), then again during my Master’s degree.

Persuasive communications has been a facet of my professional life since 2012, in every single role I’ve held. I was shaped from a young age to clearly lay out my views and predict counteraguments so I could defeat them before they ever bore fruit.

So when I step into an argument with anyone, I have already figured out every angle of attack. I can guess their emotional and logical weaknesses. I know what will persuade them, demoralize them, or make them give up. Whether that’s a bizarre stance that shakes them out of propaganda-mind or providing detailed citations, I don’t have to rely on ad hominems or cheap shots.

In fact, I argue with people on Facebook for fun. Like actual fun. It’s delightful for me. I get to practice my rhetorical skills for free.

I would hazard that many writers are like this. Words come so easily to us, and we consider them so precious, that we can deploy them with precision at any time.

Again, this could go one of two ways (or maybe both at the same time). Someone facing a calm, measured opponent who backs them into a corner can feel threatened and project arrogance onto the debater. On the other hand, someone who is constantly winning fights is going to get a little cocky about how smart they are.

There could also be a bit of Dunning-Kruger effect going on, too. Since we are so good at expressing ourselves, we start to believe that we understand what we’re arguing about on a deeper level than we really do. We can explain it so well! We can predict the counterarguments! We are basically experts!

Which is not true, of course. But it can feel that way, especially in a heated argument when we’re desperate to win.

Precise communication can be threatening.

The longer I write, the more direct I become. With directness comes a penchant for using exactly the right word rather than talking around it for other people’s comfort.

I despise when people use technical terms wrong. This has become especially common with psychology terms and is especially grating because, as I have noted before, psychology is one of my special interests.

It fills me with the kind of rage that could encompass a whole dictionary if I don’t rein it in. I can’t stop myself from correcting people and explaining what the term actually means, which can come across as patronizing even though I don’t mean it that way. And patronizing is, in many people’s minds, the same thing as arrogance … there we go again with conflating things! Argh!

People do not want to admit they are wrong. I don’t, you don’t, I think everyone doesn’t more than a few times every day. It sucks to be wrong.

But, unfortunately, many of us (me included sometimes) can’t tolerate this, so we turn it against the person who made us feel that way. The person correcting us becomes the antagonist, and it’s easier to reach for a kill shot – “you’re arrogant, you think you know everything” – than to simply back away. That attack is a temporary soother for the ego threat, letting us skate away feeling like we won.

I suspect that we writers get this attack leveled at us more than the general population because of the precise, direct language we often use. However, some writers have a tendency to overexplain, which can also come across as arrogant because it feels condescending. We just can’t talk like normal people, and this means we also can’t win regardless of which extreme we embrace.

Writers are people like everyone else, and we all have our flaws.

It’s common to stereotype people based on their activities or profession. We assume doctors are assholes. We think someone who works in public service must be a good person. We figure that an astrophysicist is going to be smart all over and maybe a bit of an absent-minded professor.

But that’s not true. Some doctors might be perfectly nice people. Someone in public service can be abusive. I’ve met people in high-level academic careers who are, frankly, absolute morons outside of their very specific expert niche.

While what we surround ourselves with can certainly influence our mindsets and how we approach the world, we are each saddled with a unique blend of neuroses that may be inflated by our work.

So some writers can be arrogant and insecure because some people can be arrogant and insecure. The assholery might not have anything to do with their writing, per se; that’s just where it leaks out in the most obvious way.

That arrogance could be entitlement bred by a stable, wealthy home life, or it could be the brittle posturing of someone who feels they always have something to prove. Maybe it has a completely different origin that I can’t guess at because I’m not omniscient and don’t live in anyone else’s head.

So, I gasp at the end of this post … are writers insecure and arrogant? I dunno man, it depends. Some are, because there’s always going to be some negative traits when you apply it to a large enough population.

But some of the “arrogance” may be insecurity from the other person. And some of it may just be defensiveness, or clarity of language, that is misinterpreted as arrogance. The more insecure someone feels in their identity, the harder they will protect it; plus, the more someone embraces the writer’s life, the more they will express themselves in an intimidating way.

I’d caution everyone against applying universal frameworks to any group, including writers. It’s such an enormous industry, one that so many people underestimate. Fiction authors and journalists are the public faces of our discipline, and that may skew the perception, too.

Still, this doesn’t mean us writers don’t have work to do on ourselves so that we either eradicate our big egos or stop misconstruing ourselves that way. Simpler language when arguing. More humility, feigned or genuine. And a refusal to cling to this idea that being a writer makes us better than everyone else on the planet.