For a long time I believed that generosity meant visibility. If I was excited about something, if I was learning something useful, if I was building something meaningful, then surely the right thing to do was to share it right away. After all, isn’t that how community grows.
Lately I have been rethinking that.
There is a story that circulates online about a young woman who posted a photo of her plane ticket because she was so excited about an upcoming trip. Someone with too much time and too little kindness called the airline pretending to be her and cancelled the flight. By the time she realized what had happened, the ticket was gone.
It sounds extreme until you realize how often we leave our own doors cracked open in smaller, quieter ways.
Writers in particular are encouraged to narrate everything in real time. Drafts, deals, pivots, plans. We are told that transparency builds trust, that showing the process is part of the art. There is truth in that. There is also a difference between sharing wisdom and handing out blueprints.
I am learning that not everything that is good needs to be visible while it is still fragile. There is a season where ideas are seedlings. They need soil and patience, not spotlights. Talking too soon does not make a project more real. Sometimes it makes it more vulnerable.
This is not about secrecy for secrecy’s sake. It is about stewardship. About choosing which parts of the journey are meant for the page and which are meant for the workshop. About protecting your momentum so it has time to become something sturdy.
None of this is meant to make you afraid to share. Creativity is still meant to be communal. Inspiration is still meant to travel. The shift is simply this. Before you post, before you announce, before you invite the world into a room, pause and ask yourself whether this is a finished story or still a working draft.
You can inspire without oversharing. You can teach without exposing every moving piece. You can be generous and still be wise.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do for your work is to let it grow quietly until it is ready to be seen.
xo Ametra.
