5 Tips to Regain Lost Confidence – WN 005

This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 5: Five Tips For Regaining Lost Confidence.

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Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write every day. I am your host, Sarah Werner, and I want to follow up on something that we talked about in the last episode, which was about getting in the zone. I had a really great conversation with my sister, Rebecca, over the phone earlier today. She is a writer part-time, and she also works part time as a security guard for a museum, which I think is awesome. And I’m really proud of her.

But every day before she goes into work at the museum, she writes. And so she was telling me her story about how she gets into the zone before going to work every day. She says, “I start writing the first thing in the morning when I wake up for about two to three hours. I put on some nice classical music, sit back and go for it. I’m most productive in the morning because my brain is fresh and I don’t have a full day’s worth of anxieties and cares weighing down on me, after about noon, my brain stops functioning and then I go to work.” So thank you, Rebecca, for sharing your own writing story.

I’m sure that you have your own methods for getting into the zone or for surprising yourself every day with your own writing. And if you’d like to share that with me, I’d be happy to share it on the air during my show. Simply go to sarahwerner.com, S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R dot com and go to the contact page and send me an email from there. Or you can email me at hello at sarahwerner dot com. So today I want to talk about being confident as a writer and specifically regaining lost confidence if you ever had any to begin with.

If you’re anything like me, I tend to be a little bit shy and I’m really bad at just striding into a room and taking what I want. If you’re anything like me, you walk into a room and you instantly want to hide, or you gravitate toward the few people, you know, and if there’s something that you want, you’ll work really hard to get it, or you’ll just give up on it all together. Maybe that’s just because I’m an introvert and I don’t want to speak for you, because you might be an extrovert. But I found that a lack of confidence when I’m writing is like poison.

And in fact, it’s enough of a reason to make me stop writing for a very long time. So perhaps you’re like me and it’s been a long time since you’ve been able to write anything good. I talked about this a little bit in my first episode, which was called “What Keeps You From Writing?” But I really want to explore one specific area today. There are a thousand reasons why you might lose confidence in your writing. And I think that I’ve lived through a fair share of them. Perhaps you faced rejection. If you’re like Stephen King and you have a railroad spike upon which you impale your rejection letters and you’d like to by impaling them hurt them as much as they hurt you.

Because writing is so deeply personal. And when our writing is rejected, we feel rejected to the very center of our beings. Or perhaps you got a poor grade on a paper that you worked really hard on or on a creative project that you were really proud of. Perhaps you were simply told at one point that you’re not good enough. We tend to become what other people name us to be. Perhaps you have been teased or made fun of or you feel like your writing is less worthy because you write in a certain genre, and your book will never be selected for Oprah’s Book Club or featured on the New York Times Best Seller List.

I had an interesting conversation with my mother several years ago, and I asked her why she didn’t write. And she told me that she was in second grade and they all had to write a poem and everyone made fun of my mother’s poem. It was about playing with a ball down by the wall. And yes, it was perhaps childish, but she was a child. Who knows what potential she would have grown into later in life had she not stopped writing and had she pursued it and become more skilled and more gifted as she went along.

Perhaps you’ve told yourself you’re not good enough. I know sometimes that we can be our own worst critics. And by sometimes, I mean, all the time. We are our own worst enemies and perhaps that has led you into some sort of existential crisis. Maybe you have become a writing nihilist. And you’re wondering, “Why am I even bothering? The things that I write will never matter. The things that I write cannot possibly change the world. Who would want to read what I am creating?” Maybe you’re like me. And when you walk into a bookstore, you are of two minds.

Part of you is delighted and wants to go swimming Scrooge McDuck-style in the piles and piles of books. I seriously want to do that. I think that’s how I want to die. Is that weird? Yeah, maybe that’s a little weird, but I love books. But the other part of you is terrified and overwhelmed. And you feel insignificant. You feel like one grain of sand among billions. There are so many books out there. There are so many books that have already been written. And if you’re in a used bookstore, discarded and forgotten. To have yourself sold for 10 cents off of a bargain rack seems damaging in and of itself.

But my job is to help you get to the point where you even publish a book and we don’t have to worry yet about where it ends up until we publish it. Perhaps you’ve lost confidence because of a setback in your life. If you’ve lost a job, if your romantic relationships aren’t working out the way you want them to, if your family life is in chaos or disarray. Those certainly have a big impact on your confidence and your confidence can affect the way you write.

Perhaps you read something terribly awful and it poisoned you. What I’m talking about here is, okay, so you know I like to read pretty much everything from best sellers to poetry, collections, to sci-fi romance, to mysteries, to everything. And sometimes the books that I pick up are not super great. And that’s okay, usually I still enjoy reading them because I’m a book junkie. But sometimes you pick up a book and the manner of writing sticks with you and perhaps unconsciously, you absorb the sentence structure and the dialogue structure and the voices into your own mind, and it comes out like poison in your own writing.

I say this because I’ve had this happen before and this especially is very likely to happen if you haven’t developed a writer’s voice yet. If you’re not used to writing every day, if you are still young in your writing career, not young in age, but young in your writing career. If you are still somewhat new to writing, I noticed that I have been very, very susceptible to sort of unconsciously picking up other writers styles. And as I have said before, and I will say again, in its own podcast episode, reading, the act of reading is an integral part of writing.

And to some degree you know people say you are what you eat? I say, you write what you read. Perhaps not consciously and I’m not suggesting that you plagiarize anything because plagiarism is bad. But you learn every time you read something, you learn and you grow whether or not you intend to. And this can be both good and bad depending. So I read a book that ended up being toxic for me personally. It was a high fantasy book called Rhapsody. And I read it because I wanted to read more fantasy novels with female protagonists. So this had been on my list for a while and I read it and it was okay. But I realized four weeks after I had finished that book that I had unconsciously absorbed the writer’s pacing and dialogue style and way of describing things. And I wasn’t even writing fantasy.

And so it didn’t work, but I couldn’t shake it. So then I said, “Aha, I’m going to counter this. I will counter this by reading a really good book by a really good writer.” And so I picked up one of my go-to novels by one of my go-to novelists. I picked up Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. This book is one of my comfort food books and maybe you have a book like this too. The reason I love to read William Gibson is not necessarily for his plots or stories, but for the pure beauty and almost mechanical flow of his writing.

So this is what I read. “Five hours New York jet lag and Case Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm. It is that flat and spectral non-hour, awash and limbic tides, brainstem stirring fitfully flashing inappropriate reptilian demands for sex, food, sedation, all of the above and not really an option now.”

So I read that and immediately felt the way I do whenever I walk into a bookstore delighted, full of the feelings of discovery and possibility and yet daunted, overwhelmed, almost defeated knowing that there is no way I could ever come up with a sentence like that.

The same thing happened to me when I decided to go on a hermitage and this is maybe a longer story for another day. But essentially I went out to the woods and I rented this tiny one person cabin. And I said, “I’m going to write for the next several days and it’s going to be amazing.” And to inspire myself, I brought along a volume of poetry by Mary Oliver who is completely lovely and inspiring and amazing and talented. But at the same time, if you are a writer who is nowhere near her level, the sheer beauty and grace and power of her language of her mastery of the English language will make you feel hopeless, which is exactly what I felt.

And so I lost confidence in my own writing. I compared myself to the greats or to what I considered the greats. You probably have your own. I felt the opposite of inspired. So what should we do when that happens? Are we supposed to stop reading and stop comparing ourselves to other writers? Not necessarily. I still firmly believe that the best way to grow as a writer is to read. However, comparing yourself competitively to other writers can be a little destructive. I mean, it’s great if you need to feel like you’re competing against someone, if that helps you to write and to succeed.

But for me, I just felt like I had gotten my butt kicked in a competition I hadn’t even signed up for. So once you’ve realized that it’s been a long time since you’ve written anything. And once you realize that you could probably stand to be more confident in your writing, how do you go about getting that? How do you go about getting your confidence back or gaining confidence for the first time at all? So let’s talk about regaining that lost confidence. I don’t know if you can hear, I have a three-legged cat who runs around and bumps into walls and stuff, and he just crashed into my office door. So if you’re wondering what that sound was, it’s a tiny white three-legged cat.

All right. 1. Free yourself of the pressure. I know that this feels like one of those things that is easier said than done. And I’m sitting here right now with a smile on my face, because this is a place where I get stuck too. But I know you can do this. This is not a competition. It won’t even become a competition until you produce something with which you can compete, a published work. So put that out of your mind for now.

What you need to focus on right now is production. You are not on the clock. This is not a timed exercise. You are not fixing a blown out tire on the NASCAR track. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about racing. That’s a bad analogy. I wanted to use the analogy that said, “You are not fighting to save somebody’s life,” but I don’t want to say that because literature has a power to help and heal people. But don’t think about that right now for yourself from the pressure. Tell yourself it’s okay. You have the time that you need. You have the time that you need to experiment and grow.

2. Remember that you are a writer. Earlier I mentioned that names have power and that names can create. So give yourself permission to call yourself a writer. Get over the barriers of, “But I haven’t published anything” or “It’s not my full-time job.” If you say you are a writer then you are a writer and whatever helps you internalize that, or believe that, do it. Get business cards made that say Sarah Werner, Writer. But don’t use my name or do you use my name. I guess I don’t really care. Go old school and write it down 500 times on paper or 50 times on paper. 500 seems a little excessive, I guess.

Write “I am a writer.” That is something that no one can ever take away from you. Affirm to yourself that what you’re doing is right. If you are at all driven to write, to create with words, then you need to be acting on that. You are a writer and you need to name yourself as such.

3. Be proactive. By which I mean, be active at all. Don’t be like me. Don’t let despair paralyze you. Don’t let despair win, right? If you’ve watched enough Disney movies or after-school specials, you know better. So be proactive. Start writing. Remember that nothing is stopping you from opening up a fresh word document on your computer or from picking up a clean, fresh pad of paper and a pen or pencil. And simply seeing what words your brain comes up with.

I’ve mentioned before that writing is healing or writing can be used to help heal. If you have a serious loss of confidence, maybe don’t necessarily jump into creating awesome poetry or your novel, but perhaps simply write for yourself for a while. Use it as therapy, journal, write down your feelings, get to the root of what’s taken your confidence away and fight back against it.

4. Once you’ve started writing again, keep it up. If you start by journaling, then you can soon transition into writing fiction or writing poetry or whatever it is that you are made to write. Form a habit and persevere. And I think you’ll notice that by writing every day, you will get better. I know that in some fields, they’ll tell you that practice makes perfect. I don’t think that practice can make you a perfect writer, but it can make you a pretty darn skilled writer.

5. (And this is something that I am still working out for myself.) Find a coach or a mentor or someone to read what you have written. Someone you trust. Trust being the operative word here. You can have all the self-doubt in the world, but sometimes all you need is the affirmation of someone you trust to keep going. I recently kind of stumbled my way into a mentorship with a fellow writer. And I didn’t even know she was a writer until I heard her speak. And I was like, “Oh man, this awesome lady is a writer.” And she owns it and she’s good. And she has insights.

It doesn’t matter if this person is older or younger than you so long as they understand the importance of writing and the struggle of writing. And the fact that you might need them and they might need you to continue struggling forward in your writing. I want to point out that all of this stuff takes time. Most of the things that I’m talking about in my podcast in general, take time. Perseverance takes time. Building a habit takes a long time. There’s no waving of the magic wand. There’s no silver bullet. There’s just you and your confidence, and your realization of your own potential. And that’s really the message that I want to tell you right now is that you have potential.

I truly believe that every single person has a story to tell whether it’s a true story or a fictional story or a story about someone who has inspired or helped them, whoever you are, you have truth in your heart. Not to sound all cheesy and everything, but you do and it’s true. And you need to share that truth. If you feel compelled to write, or if you feel drawn to creative writing, that’s a sign. That is a little kernel of potential and you need to nurture it so that it can grow. Yeah, that’s right. I used the plant analogy.

So the book for this week and I refuse to be embarrassed by this is one of the infamous/famous, I don’t know, books in the Anita Blake series. I know, right? I read The Killing Dance because I’ve been kind of slowly working my way through the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton for a couple of years now. And I read a couple of them a year and I don’t know why I like them so much. These books were some of the I think original paranormal romance books. They are very, very 90s and you can tell because the clothing and the outfits are just ridiculously 90s. It’s uncomfortably 90s. But hey, that’s coming back into style. So maybe soon I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, acid washed jeans.”

But the premise of these books is that Anita Blake is a vampire slayer/necromancer. I said questioningly, I don’t know why, but some of you may that I am a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. And I’m not saying that these books are super similar to the show, but it’s reminiscent enough that I’m like, “Oh man, it’s just like I’m watching Buffy for the first time again.” Except Buffy that’s rated R for romance like the kind that you probably do not want to read. I don’t know, but you know what? They’re fun. The Killing Dance highlights what has become I don’t know if I want to say staple, a staple in modern romance. And that is the love triangle.

I actually had to stop reading young adult fiction for a while because I got so tired of the forced love triangle. And I don’t know what kept this one feeling fresh and genuine. I think that Hamilton is very good at writing characters. And I know that a lot of people really take issue with Anita Blake as a character because she’s a little bit too tough girl, whatever. I know I’m very eloquent. But part of me appreciates a female character that is kind of a sociopath. She is able to kind of kill not just monsters, but kind of anybody without remorse and yet it disturbs her. And I think that that makes for a very interesting character.

And I think that as a woman, it addresses some things that are not often addressed and literature. Because sometimes I do feel emotionally distant. Not on the scale of killing people, obviously, but sometimes I don’t care. And sometimes I struggle with not caring and on that sort of metaphysical level, the character of Anita Blake really appeals to me. She does not ever sacrifice her principles. And she only ever does what is right. And that is a really appealing anchor for me in times where I feel burned out or a little bit nihilistic.

She’s just such a passionate character, even when she’s being dispassionate if that makes sense. And you can tell that the author has a lot of fun writing for her. I want to cover that in a future podcast episode, but you can tell when a writer is having fun and Laurell Hamilton is definitely having fun with these books. So what I suggest that you read these? If you have a high tolerance for graphic romance and 90s clothing and dudes with inexplicably long hair, I don’t get that. I don’t particularly like it, but there’s a lot of dudes with long hair. But it’s an interesting look at the world, especially for people who do enjoy the True Blood series or Twilight. You might enjoy these books.

Today’s question for Q&A comes from a friend and she didn’t want her name mentioned. And so I won’t mention it, but she asked me quite plainly and with some degree of concern are books dead? Is reading dead? And I’m not going to answer that right now because I want to have a special podcast episode about that. Because it’s something that for years I worried about. And not in just the sense that, “Oh, I’m a writer and my livelihood is swirling down the drain.” But more in the sense of reading is important on so many levels and how dare we think we can get rid of it. So stay tuned. You will get a full episode in the coming weeks.

I hope that today and in days to come, you find that the confidence you need to write every day to fulfill your passion and to be awesome. I want to send special thanks out to a couple people today. Number one to Cliff Ravenscraft of podcastanswerman.com. He gave my podcast a really, really nice shout out in episode 393 of his Podcast Answer Man podcast. I’ll link to it in my show notes if you want to listen to it. But Cliff, that was so kind of you. I don’t know. I just don’t even have words. Thank you so much for doing that.

I’d like to thank my sister, Rebecca, for a lovely phone conversation and for sharing with me her own writing methods. I’d like to thank my husband, Tim, for once again, giving me the house to myself so that I can record. Thanks also to my podcast Facebook group members, Rohn Gibson and Peter Aadahl. You guys are so smart and inspiring.

Finally, and certainly not the least important. Thank you for listening. Thank you for downloading my podcast. Thank you for leaving me five star reviews and written comments on iTunes. I’m super excited to say that the right now podcast made it into the New and Noteworthy section on iTunes and it just made my week. So you guys are awesome and amazing. If you want me to send you emails, I will write you emails. Just sign up for my email newsletter. You just go to my website, sarahwerner.com. And you can sign up for my newsletter a couple of ways.

First, if you scroll all the way to the bottom of a page, you’ll get a little popup that will let you subscribe to my email mailing list. Otherwise, if you go to the contact page, there is also a link there for signing up. And I promise I won’t spam you. I am not a jerk or at least I try not to be a jerk. Also, I do produce the Write Now podcast on my own dime and my own time. And so if you would like to help support me as I endeavor to help other writers succeed, you will find a link in today’s show notes that say help support this podcast. It will whisk you away to the magical world of Patreon, where you can make a safe and secure donation should you wish in which case, thank you.

And that’s it for episode five of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage. You need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m Sarah Werner, and I want you to remember this week that you have potential, and that it is your duty to make the most of it.

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