After joining the #metoo movement, James Van Der Beek thought he’d made a mistake. He doesn’t now. Let him explain.

I use screenwriting software called Final Draft. Love the program. Hate the name.“Final” draft? Really? I’m trying to bridge that first tentative connection between inspiration and creation, and already I’ve got the word final hanging over my head?

OK, maybe I’m being a little sensitive. But as an actor, I’ve found evolution has been key to my professional survival: At age 20, I was cast in a zeitgeist-defining TV series. At 26, I was adrift. I’ve since managed to work my way back into a very exciting flow, but there have definitely been a few projects along the way I’m hoping you either never saw or have long since forgotten. No need to go on IMDb. Really. Just keep reading.

Recently I staged a full-on reinvention: I co-created, wrote, executive-produced, and starred in my own show. And while it garnered the best reviews of my career, boy, was it a process. Exhilarating highs were matched by debilitating lows spent questioning, Is any of this good? What I eventually realized is, you have to allow the process to benefit your work. If you’ve done it right, you’ll discover so much along the way that, when you look back, you’ll be almost embarrassed by what you didn’t know—couldn’t have known—while banging out that first humble effort on Final Draft.

But the age we live in isn’t big on process. It’s a “gotcha” culture, big on “likes,” followers, and scathing judgments. I was reminded of this in October, amid the first major wave of allegations against Harvey Weinstein. I saw brave women challenged on everything from credibility to timing to—most appallingly—complicity in the violation of their dignity. Here they were, transforming a moment of powerlessness into one of resolve, and getting backlash for it. It pissed me off.

As someone who’s dealt with harassment and abuse on a few levels, it’s my understanding that people cope with it the best they know how at the time. You can’t judge their process. I retweeted an article illuminating this, added a passing mention of my experiences with powerful and abusive men, and went to bed.

I awoke to a backlash of my very own. Most of it was easy to dismiss—until I saw speculation that my friends and mentors had been the perpetrators. I felt sick. I was just trying to help. But that didn’t matter. I quickly clarified that the offenders I’d obliquely mentioned weren’t famous—and that they’d either been punished or were dead—but the damage had been done. Should I have just shut up?

Fear of getting it wrong can be so paralyzing, it’s tempting to stay quiet. But that creates its own problems. So, how to navigate? It’s a question I struggle with even as I write this. Legendary acting teacher Stella Adler said, “In your choice lies your talent.” I’ve always loved that, because it puts the power back in our hands, in every moment, to get it right. It’s not about any past role, review, nasty comment, or mistake, and it’s certainly not about someone else’s complete disregard for our dignity—or our initial reaction to it. (Or even our second.) “In your choice lies your talent” means, to me, that as long we reserve the right to keep making our own choices—and learning from them—no draft of ourselves can ever be “final.”

Watch James Van Der Beek’s What Would Diplo Do? on Viceland now. He will next appear in Ryan Murphy’s FX series Pose.