Writing builds self-confidence as we write. The issue for many of us is that it also requires confidence to write. Writing therefore is one of the great chicken and egg processes of life. That can be frustrating if you are just beginning, trying to maintain or increase your writing confidence. Where do you start?
Before we just whip out a mesmerizing list of hints and tricks to getting off the dime, let’s take a look at what a confident writer looks like. We are not going to get anywhere if we can’t tell where we are going to begin with.
There are lots of things we can look for as indicators of confidence, but for our purposes here, I am going to use only a few.
The Look of Confidence
A confident writer tends to:
–Be self-reliant in consistently producing regular high quality work.
–Focus their time on creating and developing their own ideas and solutions for existing problems, rather than worry over how well they can write or how good they are seen.
–See writing as a tool rather than a chore.
–Feel that writing is fun and recognizes the positive feelings they get from the bio-feedback loop we create when we write.
So where do we start to build our confidence?
We start when we make a commitment to be confident. This choice will take some time to become a natural feeling, but it starts with a conscious choice to be confident first. Continuous self-improvement and being satisfied with the gains with writing work itself will only build on this choice as you go along.
A few ways to improve our self-confidence are:
–Get Feedback from people you know and trust.
You can ask anyone you trust to be honest about the work. That includes co-workers, friends, family, or members of a writing community. The main thing here is to choose just a few people you trust and to critique the advice they give. Do not accept their answers as either condemnation or a gold stamp of approval.
Take all constructive criticism in a professional manner. It should not be personal for you. It is meant to help you. It will not always sync with your own emotions. Sometimes it can feel too supportive when you want to shred the work or too critical when you really need more of a boost. Balance these issues in yourself and beware of them in others.
Avoid getting advice from the over brutal or those who only praise. Ask your critic what should be improved, removed, is missing, added to, made clearer, etc… Giving your evaluators some clues for what you are looking for will help them give you the kind of feedback you need.
–Start a blog.
The most common advice out there is to write every day. This is generally great advice. There can be a sticking point though for those who are writing longer pieces or work in a profession like science, where one writes regularly but feedback is low.
Blogging solves both the issue of regularly writing and getting feedback along with a whole host of other useful writer’s skills like going live with your work before you publish. Seth Godin is famous for going live and getting feedback from what he calls shipping. If you want to be a published writer, you are going to have to deal with every level of the process a writer takes to get a blog out regularly. The idea here is start a blog and ship consistantly. The confidence and skills will both grow with the accumulated work.
–Build a library or portfolio.
A large collection of your own writing serves to build confidence on several levels. It is a great reminder for how much you have produced and how far you have come in your skills. It also serves as a great tool to show potential clients, possible bosses and businesses your skills. It can also give you some goals for what skills you want to work on next.
–Use Confidence to build confidence.
Build your confidence from something you can see you already have confidence in, such as your ability to learn. Approach your writing from a learner’s mind. Writing, like all forms of work, gets stronger the more you do it. As your writing proficiency grows from what you have learned, your confidence to tackle more through learning about writing grows as well. You become a more confident writrer.
–A rolling stone gathers no moss.
Rolling snowballs only grow while rolling. Once you start to build your confidence, just keep going. The confidence will take care of itself. This is where we can use our habit building to help maintain a daily writing practice.
–Build your writing confidence by using learning as a tool.
Writing is a learning process. We can use that to become better writers and more confident. Gaining confidence by a learning approach allows for us to avoid some of the pitfalls that we already face as writers, such as failure. Mistakes are part of the learning process. We tend to look more at them from a corrective and improvement stand point rather than a critical self-evaluation.
Remember the wins.
We win all the time. Trouble happens when people fail to remember the small wins because we are all hung up on the big ones. We all like to feel good and big wins make you feel real good. They can be an emotional rush. We tend to spend lot of time looking for these rushes because they do not come all the time.
Small wins happen all the time. The thing is they bring the same good feelings as the big ones. They are smaller in scale, but they are constant like sand falling through an hour glass. They add up pretty big over time.
Sure we should work and look for the big wins. They are like giant rocks filling our hourglass, but the daily small wins add up too. They fill the spaces between the larger wins and take out the empty feeling we get between big wins.
Embrace criticism.
In the Marines we often say “Embrace the suck”. This is just another way of saying “Have courage.” It takes guts to look at ourselves with an honest eye for improving things. Ego is a tricky and does not like change. Our egos make it easy to ignore some issue that really needs addressing.
When you open yourself up to criticism you will have to let much of it fly past you. Most of it is not really useful, but among all the stuff flung at you there are some criticisms you need to hear. You have to be open for that. The only way is to embrace it all with more than just listening from time to time. You need to actively seek valid criticism. If it applies, use it. The rest you can let slide.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
Instead of looking at others, use your past performances and grade against them. Learning to know yourself allows you to identify both how you have improved as well as those areas you still need work on. Knowing what needs work is a rather important self-development skill in and of its self. It is one of the main reasons we read our old stuff.
Take your time with your work.
Rough drafts are a must. No one writes a perfect first draft. I have read that Asimov only typed one draft for his books, but he had a little secret. He wrote his first draft in his head. He had worked on his memory so he would know his complete piece when he sat down to type. Even then, he would hit sticking points that required he stop and let his mind cook a little more before going further. That’s why he had so many typewriters setup. When one project got stuck he could move on to another. So for the record, even one of the most prolific authors of all time got stuck too. He may not have had multiple paper drafts, but he did have at least two drafts…even if one was in his head.
Take your time too.
Edits take time and give us a safe space to clear things away before they go live before the world. Accept the amount of time you need to present your very best. Relax and get down to the grind and slog. Your final work will give you greater confidence.
Take just one shot at a time.
A writer’s work load can grow in magnitude before our eyes. It can look too overbearing, stopping us in our tracks. Break it down into manageable steps. I have found the block method is great in these cases. Say you have three articles and two emails all due this week. Break it down into smaller pieces. Today, your job is to focus on just getting an article done, the BIG one. Tomorrow hammer out the emails. Then finish the remaining small articles over the rest of the week.
The point is to limit your thinking to just one type of work at a time so that you can focus. Shifting between various types of work tends to slow the process because with every new start there is a lag in time for your mind to get up to speed. Shifting too often slows your over all work down. Blocking out your work not only decreases the size and scope of the work in your head but it also speeds up the process while handing you the confidence that you can get the work done.
Track your wins.
Nothing grows confidence like reinforcing it with records of achievement. Take the time to record your wins. Last week you won three new clients and got a positive comment for some of your work. Write them down so that when doubt hits you have ammo to counter with.
Choose to be confident.
Confidence is a choice as much as a feeling. To feel it you have to want to be confident first. It might take some time to feel it. You don’t have to feel confident all the time. It just means you can be more positive when you need it. Observe your self at bit when you don’t feel confident and use your imagination to see what it would be like were you more confident.
While I am at it. The best book I have read on optimism points out that we learn optimism. Anything that is learned can be improved. Read the book Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, PhD.
Believe in yourself.
Instead of asking “why me?” ask yourself “Why not me?” instead. When we lack confidence we tend to ask, “Why are we the target?” This negative thinking tends to draw us into a pattern of focusing only on the problems. Instead shift it more positive with “Why not me?” For instance instead of asking why we never get the good $1 per word job or the fantastic editor position we shift our thinking. We ask Why not me? Why should I not get $1 per word or that great editor job? This forces us to find the hidden errors we have been making. Then we can fix them instead of avoid them.
Lastly WRITE.
In the end nothing will make you a more confident writer than writing. You have to put down the words and send them into the world to get somewhere. So write.
Last Thought
Realize that self-doubt is a normal feeling. Self-confidence can be built. You are going to make a choice either way. Choose confidence.
Please read some more. How about: Writing the 13 Gates Mountain Path
Photo by Michael Shannon on Unsplash