Re-learning self-confidence: A key to writing a successful pitch?
Writer’s Blog 8
Writing a pitch can be really scary… As someone young who wants to have their thoughts heard, the idea of rejection is extremely scary. As I have been learning about the pitch selection process, what stories are picked up, and why, it has also prompted me to think about who is heard and why. Of course, it is important to consider things like reading submission guidelines and being familiar with the publication before deciding to submit something. However, what stood out to me most among the tips for how to write a successful pitch was the idea that confidence is key. As such, no one will pick up your work if they can tell that you aren’t sure about it. But how are you supposed to be confident about something you haven’t written yet? That is a tricky question. I believe that the education system taught us to be particularly scarce with being too confident in our own opinions, yet I argue that is a skill that is necessary to re-learn in order to have a successful pitch.
As a student, my confidence as a writer often does not come from my grasp of knowledge because I am often not the expert on what I am writing about. In most cases, where I am writing a research paper, it is important to know my place as the student who is interacting with research presented by academics deemed as respectable. Undergraduate students are often not given the authority to be confident in a subject before they have done their proper research and collected their thought via writing. If all throughout our college experience we are framed as the amateur whose opinion is not really what matters, then how are we supposed to write confident pitches about something we may not be the expert on? I may have many strong opinions, but how do I become confident in those?
I think attempting to write confidently is especially hard for students when it comes to opinion writing. I can tell you confidently that I can research a broad range of subjects and regurgitate the information and even develop my own argument, but writing an opinion is not typically something that we are asked to do. As undergraduates, most of us are not considered experts on anything, so how is anyone going to take our opinions seriously? We have to re-learn the ability to trust our own opinions on things and take our own thoughts as expert knowledge in order to write confidently.
Of course, there will have to be a fair amount of ‘fake it til’ you make it’ mentality, however, we should also really strive to empower our own voices so that we can actually be confident in our own writing. Though young voices can be easily written off, it is important to understand the value of new opinions and to become truly confident in our opinions in order to write successful pitches and get our voices recognized.
