A college professor once told me I should find another career because I was a crappy writer.
That one comment delayed my writing career by thirty years. I believed him. I went into technology instead and didn’t start writing professionally until decades later. I’ve now ghostwritten more than fifty books and published over a hundred. That professor’s opinion didn’t age well, but it took thirty years before I stopped letting it run my life.
That’s what gaslighting does. It plants a voice in your head that isn’t yours, and that voice tells you your work isn’t good enough, your instincts are wrong, and you should probably quit. Writers are especially vulnerable because writing requires confidence in your own judgment, and gaslighting is designed to destroy confidence in your own judgment.
I’ve experienced it from professors, clients, and colleagues at various points across my career. This is what it looks like in practice, how to recognize it, and how to handle it without losing your mind or your business.
What does gaslighting look like for writers?
Gaslighting isn’t someone disagreeing with your work. Disagreement is normal. An editor who says “this chapter needs restructuring” is doing their job. A client who says “this doesn’t sound like me” is giving legitimate feedback. That’s collaboration.
When someone says “your writing isn’t good enough,” a writer’s first instinct is to wonder if they’re right.Share on X
Gaslighting is when someone systematically makes you doubt your competence, your perception of events, or your right to be compensated for your work. It’s manipulative, it’s deliberate, and it escalates over time. Toxic people use it because it works.
I had a client who gave me a pile of AI-generated content from ChatGPT and then screamed at me for not using it.
He wanted me to take his garbage output and turn it into a book, but he didn’t want to pay for the rewriting that would require. When I explained that using his AI drafts would create more work than starting from scratch, he insisted the AI content was good and that I was the problem. That’s gaslighting.
He was trying to make me doubt my professional judgment so he could get more work for less money.
Another client hired me for what was originally two separate books. During the project, he merged them into one and then demanded I complete the combined project at the original price. When I pointed out that the scope had changed, he screamed at me for not providing “free services” he felt he was owed. The merger was his decision. The additional work was real. But in his version of events, I was being unreasonable for expecting to be paid for the work I did.
The most elaborate version came from a client who sent me a hostile email because I didn’t “empathize with his situation” enough to give him $10,000 worth of free services. His situation was that he wanted a book but didn’t want to pay for it. When I held firm on pricing, I became the villain: heartless, unprofessional, and uncaring. The email was designed to make me feel guilty enough to cave. It didn’t work, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting.
Why Writers Are Easy Targets
Writing is personal in a way that most professions aren’t.
A plumber doesn’t question their identity when a client complains about a pipe fitting. But writers pour their judgment, their taste, and their sense of craft into every project. When someone attacks the work, it feels like they’re attacking you. Gaslighters know this and exploit it.
Writers also tend to be introspective. We analyze everything, including ourselves. When someone says “your writing isn’t good enough,” a writer’s first instinct is to wonder if they’re right. A gaslighter counts on that instinct. They count on you turning their manipulation into self-criticism, doing their work for them.
The freelance and ghostwriting world makes it worse because the client holds the money. When your income depends on keeping someone happy, you’re more likely to absorb unfair criticism than push back. Gaslighters in client relationships exploit that on purpose. They know you need the project, so they push boundaries, knowing you’ll hesitate to walk away. I think that’s the ugliest part of it, because the writers who get squeezed hardest are the newer ones who can least afford to lose the job.
How Do You Recognize Gaslighting as a Writer?
The difference between difficult feedback and gaslighting is pattern. A difficult client gives you hard notes on a specific chapter. A gaslighting client makes you feel like everything you do is wrong, across every interaction, with escalating intensity.
Watch for these patterns: the scope of the project keeps changing but the client insists it hasn’t. The client dismisses your professional expertise in favor of their own uninformed opinion. They tell you your industry-standard pricing is unreasonable.
They contradict your recollection of agreements. You start dreading every email from this person. You find yourself rehearsing defenses before conversations that shouldn’t require defending yourself.
The most telling sign is when you start doubting things you know. If you’ve ghostwritten dozens of books and a client is making you wonder whether you know how to write, the problem is sitting on the other side of that email.
How should writers handle gaslighting?
Document everything. Every email, every scope change, every agreement. When a gaslighter tells you “that’s not what we agreed to,” you need to be able to pull up the email where that’s exactly what you agreed to. Documentation is professional self-defense. I keep detailed records of every client communication, and those records have protected me more than once.
Set boundaries early and enforce them without apology.
Your pricing is your pricing. Your scope is your scope. When a client tries to expand the project without expanding the budget, address it immediately in writing. The longer you let boundary violations slide, the harder they become to correct and the more entitled the client feels to continue pushing.
Don’t respond to hostile communications right away. When a client sends an angry, manipulative email designed to provoke guilt or self-doubt, the best first response is none at all. Give yourself time to recognize the manipulation for what it is before you react. When you do respond, keep it factual, brief, and professional. Don’t engage with the emotional manipulation. Don’t defend your character. State the facts and move on.
Be willing to fire clients. Not every project is worth finishing. Not every client is worth keeping.
If someone is systematically undermining your confidence, manipulating scope, or refusing to honor agreements, the cost of continuing the relationship exceeds whatever the project pays. I’ve walked away from projects, and every time I did, the relief confirmed it was the right decision.
Build a support network of other writers and professionals who understand the business. When a gaslighter has you questioning your own competence, a trusted colleague who knows your work can remind you what’s real. Isolation is what gaslighters depend on. Connection is what breaks their power.
The Professor Was Wrong
From the podcast
Sascha Gorokhoff had a medical consensus telling him what he couldn’t do, and holds two bachelor degrees and a Harvard Kennedy School equivalent master. On the path that was supposed to be closed, on Leaders and Their Stories:
Knowing that the path wouldn’t be easy, because there was no path for the medical community.The authority saying it cannot be done is sometimes reporting the limits of their own map.
That college professor who told me to find another career was offering his professional opinion.
His professional opinion was garbage. But I believed it for thirty years. I went into technology, built a successful career in IT, and didn’t start writing professionally until my forties. Every one of those thirty years was a year I could have been writing. One comment from one professor in one classroom rewired the trajectory of my entire life.
It happened to me with fiction too. I’ve been trying to write one science fiction novel for 40 years. I had about half of it done when I sent it to somebody who ripped it to shreds and totally demotivated me. I said fuck it and walked away from it entirely. It’s been years since I made major progress, and my viewpoint on it has changed, so I need to rewrite it. I don’t want to die without finishing it.
I can’t get those years back, and the loss still burns. The voice in your head that says you’re not good enough might not be yours. It might belong to a professor, a client, a partner, or a colleague who planted it there for their own reasons. Recognize it as their manipulation and stop treating it as a fact about you.
Keep writing and keep getting better. Anyone who uses a position of authority to talk a young writer out of the work is doing real harm, and I have no respect for it, whatever credentials they hang on the wall.
