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Coping With A Crisis In Confidence
How to stay motivated with your current writing project and stave off those writing demons
This article first appeared in Writing Magazine in November 2015. (*= affiliate link: I sometimes use affiliate links in my posts. This won’t cost you anything, but if you go on to buy from a link I may earn a small commission.)
They make the most of the darker winter nights, when we’re sat at our desks, alone, pondering. They lurk at the back of our heads, waiting to pounce. All they need to whisper is one short sentence:
Are you sure that’s good enough?
Immediately, our confidence collapses. Is our writing any good, or is it complete drivel? When novelist Sarah Walters offered advice in The Guardian to other writers she told of the ‘bowel-curdling terror’ she experiences about half way through writing her novels. Confidence crises happen to us all.
Our creativity is a blessing and a curse. It gives us the ideas for the stories, novels, books, articles and poetry that we crave to write, but it also gives life to the despondent thoughts of inferiority that can stop us in our tracks.
Overcoming that crisis of confidence is the only way to see a project through to its fruition. The best way…
