Writer's doubt

[Nick B]

How do you deal with times of self doubt? Do you get it? I've read that it is fairly common but I have very serious but usually short lived bouts of incredible self doubt - Am I good enough? Will people want to read this? Will an agent even look at it? How the hell do I find enough time to write with everything else?

Sometimes it's worse and I get hit suddenly with -I can't write, I'm bad at it...

Usually a meet up with my co-writer over coffee and we are right back on it but sometimes this funk will last for days and I can't even touch my projects.

How do you beat these blues? I'll be honest I have been hit by one this last few days (I think it has been triggered, or made worse by having constant pain from a recent small operation.) and I have been grumpy, irritable and quite down.

Any ideas for a good cure for the writer's blues?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I get it, pretty badly (less since I got an agent, tbf)

Listen to the voices you can trust - I have a few writers I can confide in who can tell me to go and wise up.
Enter places where you can get positive feedback - I find the challenges great for that, even a shortlist is great for confidence, a vote is amazing and a win can lift doubts for months. Plus you see progress from month to month.
Do something positive - sub a short, draw up a new idea - and wait for it to pass ( and remind yourself it's absolutely normal.)

Also, it's harder to feel positive when we're not feeling well, so it could lift when you feel better.

 

[Hex]

Sympathy, Quellist. It's no fun.

Know that it passes. Know that we all feel it, even -- apparently -- people with a gazillion brilliant books to their name.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I don't know a writer who doesn't suffer such doubts from time to time, and some who are very successful actually feel like impostors who will one day soon be found out.

You just have to keep telling yourself that whether you are as bad as you fear you are, or as good as you hope you'll be, you can always get better. That part is in your own hands.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Fairly often, to a greater or lesser extent. As Springs said, having people whose opinions you can trust to comment on your work can help a lot.

I think it's useful, to a degree. I'm more comfortable with doubt than complacency. A good balance of doubt and confidence is probably best.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Writing is a learning process - you can only improve over time. Just ensure you try and find out where you may be going wrong, so you can make it stronger. That's a key reason for our Critiques section.

 

[Mouse]

I deal with it by glowering, cursing myself, sulking and generally announcing to everybody how much I suck, how much my writing sucks, and how I should never be allowed near words again. Then I accuse anybody who tells me otherwise of lying. Then I calm down and I'm fine again.

 

[chrispenycate]

All humans I would converse with go through this, not just writers (although writers are more likely to analyse it and put it down on paper, for fairly obvious reasons). It is an essential part of the improvement process, the 'pain' leading to the 'gain'. And isn't it nicer than those people who posted their pieces for critique, convinced that they would be receiving the adulation their work merited, only to go off in a huff when worship was not offered and suggestions were made about the possibility of improvements, oh so delicately (all right, I don't do 'delicate' as such. But I never once said 'why don't you learn to flip burgers? "Would you like fries with that?" would seem a better use for your verbal skills.') get uppety and insulting about the non-recognion of their talent. We haven't had anyone like that in a while, and I can't honestly say I've missed them.

Even ultra-self-confident pedants can get caught on the logic loop of comparing a newer piece with an older and thinking: "The newer is written better. Therefore my writing is improving. Therefore I will, from some vantage in the future, read my present stuff and recognise it for the rubbish it is." (Which is less painful than the "OMG. I prefer the older stuff; it's got more life, more emotion. I've been progressing in the WRONG DIRECTION!" Hands up anyone who's not felt that one yet.)

Essentially writers are better adapted to riding these shock waves than, say, military commanders or olympic athletes; practically no-one else, not even musicians, can incorporate the experience into their final oeuvre, as an essential element of being human.

 

[allmywires]

I have it right now. I have an idea I want to write, but I'm intimidated by the scale of it and I don't want to start it because I know I won't finish. Typical...

Fact is that I think you do have to get through it by just writing. Forcing the words out might not give you much to look back on and be proud of but once you start writing you get more and more wrapped up in the world and it gets easier. Trickle to a flow, etc. My two least favourite things about writing are beginnings and endings, which sucks since they're probably the two most important parts of a book!

 

[Phyrebrat]

Sometimes it's worse and I get hit suddenly with -I can't write, I'm bad at it...

Well you're in the right place; people here are one of the best resources to help you improve, and to buoy your spirits. FWIW I go through the same thing (as it seems we all do, from what has been said in previous posts), running through a load of debilitating emotions and self-observations fuelled by self loathing and god knows what else. I hate my writing but I can't imagine not doing it!

I get it, pretty badly (less since I got an agent, tbf)

Listen to the voices you can trust - I have a few writers I can confide in who can tell me to go and wise up.
Enter places where you can get positive feedback - I find the challenges great for that, even a shortlist is great for confidence, a vote is amazing and a win can lift doubts for months. Plus you see progress from month to month.

This is great advice, and a shortlist or vote can really give you a sense of achievement. It's a great measuring stick month-to-month and really forces you to be economical with words, and hone your skills, to get a story out in such a tight allowance.

Writing is a learning process - you can only improve over time. Just ensure you try and find out where you may be going wrong, so you can make it stronger. That's a key reason for our Critiques section.

As I Brian says, critiques is a great place for objective advice. People will identify things in your work that you haven't noticed and you can then build on or eradicate them.

All humans I would converse with go through this, not just writers (although writers are more likely to analyse it and put it down on paper, for fairly obvious reasons). It is an essential part of the improvement process, the 'pain' leading to the 'gain'.

I'd like to agree, and suggest that as artists we really tread a fine line. One minute you can be basking in the glow of a challenge vote, the next minute you can be putting on your best suit and gassing yourself.

I have it right now. I have an idea I want to write, but I'm intimidated by the scale of it and I don't want to start it because I know I won't finish. Typical...

Fact is that I think you do have to get through it by just writing. Forcing the words out might not give you much to look back on and be proud of but once you start writing you get more and more wrapped up in the world and it gets easier. Trickle to a flow, etc. My two least favourite things about writing are beginnings and endings, which sucks since they're probably the two most important parts of a book!

True: whatever happens you have to plough on. One of the schools I working in in Uganda has a motto;

The Way To Start Is To Start

I love that.

pH

 

[Boneman]

When I convince myself I'm rubbish at writing, that I'll never get any better, and nothing anybody can say will change that, I start reading. Seeing how good and how bad others are, and actually taking a break from trying to be a good writer. Enjoying the break, not thinking about it, but doodling here, messing around with other silly bits of ideas, helping others if they need it. Eevntually (can take a very long time!) my muse wakes up and says: That's enough wallowing in self-pity, no writer got to be any good unless they were writing, so get on with it!

Essentially I feel I need to purge my brain of its doubts by not thinking about them, and reading's the best way to do it.

 

[SleepyDormouse]

I get the same, lose complete confidence in my ability to write, think its a complete waste of time etc. But after a time I can't escape the niggling of that idea/WIP and turn to it again.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I've recently been through a period of self doubt. Getting personal rejections from agents should be a good thing but it led me to thinking my writing was good but not good enough. It's hard to hear my writing style is original and interesting, story and plot exciting and characters gripping but they don't know how to market it and don't want to see the full. The standard rejections have become easier to deal with because I can convince myself it isn't their thing or they didn't like it.

It took me a few months of miserably staring at the screen to get my confidence in my writing back. And I decided to finish a different novel. If it gets the same results I have some more generic type stories in the back of my mind.

I find meditating helps.

 

[Nick B]

Thanks for all the replies and suggestion, it is reassuring that it isn't just me.

 

[Hermit the frog]

It's good to have someone who believes in you. Perhaps you have a passage that you are proud of, a paragraph someone particularly liked. I have a page my ex said was brilliant. Funny how many times I’ve read that, especially when I know I’m rubbish. Eventually I know I’m not rubbish and not brilliant, just improving. Like Boneman said, reading is good for that. How some books I’ve read got published is beyond me.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

It's good to have someone who believes in you. Perhaps you have a passage that you are proud of, a paragraph someone particularly liked. I have a page my ex said was brilliant. Funny how many times I’ve read that, especially when I know I’m rubbish. Eventually I know I’m not rubbish and not brilliant, just improving. Like Boneman said, reading is good for that. How some books I’ve read got published is beyond me.

This is a good point - my first beta indicated I needed to improve but finished on one scene they thought was very good. That scene - which still exists - carried me through two years of realising I had a lot to learn....

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Best way to deal with self-doubt is write more.

 

[Rafellin]

Best way to deal with self-doubt is write more.

What he typed.

You should be writing.

Everything is fuel for the storymaking symbiote in your head. Write and the fears, the frustrations, everything falls away.

 

[Nick B]

I have to admit, apart from a few hundred words towards a short for magic, metal and steam all I have written since having a vasectomy is for this month's 75 word challenge.

Been having a fairly unhappy week (and a bit). Generally that is the advice I like to follow, if I can't add to the major work I'm doing I usually just start some scribbling piece that mayor may not amount to something that gets worked into something else.


Thanks for all the advice, I do feel better about having these attacks now that it is clear most people get them.

 

[tinkerdan]

I think what's important is to identify where and what you are involved in when the doubt strikes.

I find most of my doubt comes while reading someone who's work makes me wonder how I'll ever be that good. This is positive feedback because it's giving you something to strive for.

Other places become negative even when they try to be positive because they tend to start you down a path to nit pick at everything you might not know because someone just demonstrated to you that you're below par.

When that happens I shut myself away from all of the influence and just write furiously regardless of those influence. Some of my best work. And the best part is that if you have an agent and they edit or they get you the edit those things can be fixed. What can't be fixed as easily is the internal sores that prevent you from writing because of the seeds of self doubt.

You need to turn the seeds of doubt into the furnace of furious creativity with any and all perceived flaws intact for you to ponder over when you have banished the evil that is the self doubt.

On another note: Some of us actually need the medication.