A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.
69. How to build confidence as a writer.
This is a tough one because, in my opinion anyway, writers tend to be a naturally self-depreciating bunch. Like many other forms of artists we are known to be somewhat moody, and we have a tendancy toward being easily discouraged and thinking that our writing is fit for the dung pile.
It mighy sound terribly pessimistic, but it’s my personal opinion that there’s really no way through this attitude except to just deal with it. Sure, your confidence may be bolstered by winning a writing contest or scoring an agent, but these are things that simply cant happen to everyone, and there is no guarantee that these things will even help you. Hell, there are tons of hugely successful authors out there who have sold millions of copies of books that they themselves believe are crap. For many people absolutely nothing will convince them that they are talented or that they should be confident because people (especially people who create) just seem to be determined to be discouraged at every turn. Even if they have other people telling them that they’re awesome and talented and have a real chance at making it, artists will turn around and say, “Oh, they were just trying to be nice,” or, “Bah, they dont know what they’re talking about”.
What a downer, right?
The fact is that if you’re naturally reluctant to be confident in yourself, there’s not a lot that I or anyone else can say to change that. As cheesy as this sounds, the change has to come from within yourself first. You have to learn to be able to have confidence in yourself if your personal default is to be the exact opposite. Do you really feel like your work is junk, or do you just feel that way because of that natural self-depreciation we talked about earlier? If it’s the former, work harder, produce something you don’t feel is junk, and feel more confident as a result. If it’s the latter, smarten the hell up. There’s already enough confidence-free artists in the world…we dont need any more.
No Page Left Blank 