Sense and Sensitivity

by Amy Cipolla Barnes

Vie Studios

I have sensitive teeth. Cold. Hot. Air. It all sets them on edge. The special sensitive teeth toothpaste does nothing. March has made me cringe for another reason: near-constant writer discourse. I expect some heated discussions because we’re writers and editors. It’s hard to stop the words and thoughts especially when it feels like everything in the world is a discourse too. What I don’t expect is downright ugliness. The literary discourse has felt overwhelming recently. It spilled into my timeline despite my best efforts to avoid it. Ad nauseum. At times, nauseating.

I try to avoid lit discourse like Sensodyne and super hot coffee. It never ends well. It just doesn’t. As much as writers want it to and think they can prove a point or make a point, it likely isn’t happening. No one’s mind is really going to be changed by what they read on the internet or social media.

Against my better judgement, I read the posts and replies to posts and retweets. I saw the original posts and the follow-ups and the pile-ons. It was like an Atlanta interstate during rush hour. People honking and mad and hurt and in a hurry and harried and lost and discoursed out. People trying to get somewhere in the discussion except no one got anywhere except hurt. Privately and publicly, we got sucked into traffic and time got sucked away. Life got sucked away. It made my teeth hurt. It made my heart hurt.

I stepped away and took a closer look at my own writing and discovered I needed to change the title of a published story at the site and in my upcoming flash collection. It was published nearly a year ago. I still love the story. However, the title referenced Chernobyl. In May of 2021, that was fine. I had an 80s kid fascination with the meltdown and the TV show. In March of 2022, it’s NOT fine. The site editor changed the title immediately. My book editor did the same. There was no discourse. I didn’t go to Twitter to debate the semantics. I didn’t have to say why the title needed to be changed. Both editors were sensitive to the situation.

March is also the month my book launches which feels literally like hot water and cold ice cream in my brain at all times. In the midst of edits, my editor stopped the frantic final before-we-go-to-print-nit-picking-edits and asked if I was okay. Was I feeling overwhelmed? Was I okay going to AWP? How could he help? It was the opposite of the discourses. Sensitive. Appreciated. A breath of fresh air that didn’t make my teeth or heart hurt.

March is also a month when I have multiple sensitive CNF pieces being published. I know, not the best planning. At least one of them needs content and trigger warnings. It triggers me. On the surface it might feel simple but I know the theme is sensitive. I don’t always add trigger warnings. I don’t think the journal will require one. I know there’s a raging debate over their pros and cons. The thing is adding TW/CW to a piece with a simple theme notation isn’t a hard thing to do. It is a sensitive thing to do. It doesn’t mean a person won’t read the essay. It means they’ll be prepared to read it. It may still feel like a gut punch because they identify with it.

In the same vein, I’ve seen posts people are submitting explicit content to journals run by teens. I’ve had to add inappropriate content labels to multiple submissions recently. Tough subjects and even explicit subjects can be written well and submitted but I also want to say — please give readers a heads-up. It’s not a discourse, just a courtesy. If there is explicit or violent content, don’t punch them in the face with it over Submittable. A reader you don’t know may have opened the queue and sat down with a story and found a theme that makes them cringe. I’m not prudish. I understand and appreciate tough content. I appreciate personal takes on hard topics. I’ve selected difficult pieces as an editor and sent them up for further reads as a reader. Where that line gets messy is when you have a 16-year-old reading it or a new first reader learning the process or a reader with a personal connection.

I want to change the discourse. I want being sensitive to not be a dirty word. I want it to be as easy as writing an editor and asking nicely: please fix this. Please change this because it will hurt someone else. 99.9% of the time both sides (especially after 2 years of Covid and a war) honestly have a point and just want to be heard. It’s not black and white or even eggshell or grey. It’s sensitive. People are sensitive. If we’re told something or read something bad or hurtful or even perceived as that, we’re going to cringe and maybe react or act out. People will discuss things behind the scenes. They will cry at home. They will feel angry behind their computer screens. It gets worse when that happens on Twitter in public. People are sensitive. People get hurt. People brace for discourse. They avoid hot soup and hot heads and cold shoulders. And they leave Twitter or friendships or miss out on stories and thoughts. That ultimately benefits no one.

I propose a little time and a little tenderness and a little sensitivity and a whole lot of empathy. I still hate sensitive teeth toothpaste and will try to avoid discourse. I also love writers and words and books and essays and fiction and creativity. In the end, it’s a lot like toothpaste — you can’t put discourse back even if you delete the posts. And I really don’t want discourse all over my Twitter.