Don’t Wait To Feel Good Enough To Write Your Book. Start Writing And You’ll Become Good Enough.
You have within you right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.
Author Note: This newsletter and podcast is going on a summer break for the whole month of July. We’ll be back to regular publishing of new essays and episodes from August 3rd.
Upcoming episode on Becoming A Writer podcast this Saturday — we are going to talk about giving ourselves mental rest to enjoy a better writing life.
You have within you right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.
- Brian Tracy
For the first six years of my writing life, I was beating around the writing bush.
I started my writing journey by spending most of my time learning about the craft. That’s the common sense thing to do, right? But soon, I used reading one more writing book, taking one more writing course, or watching one more writing video to procrastinate on writing.
And I didn’t do this consciously.
The more I learnt about the craft of writing, the more I realised how much I didn’t know. With each book, course, and video, I started to believe that I was not ready to start working on my novel and that I was not good enough yet.
What I lacked as a new-born writer was self-confidence.
I didn’t believe in my faith as a writer. I gave into the myth that we have to be confident enough to know that we can write that book before we write it. Since I wasn’t feeling sure of myself as a writer, I was starting to doubt my writing dream as well.
You know things are bad when you start to doubt the dream that gave you the reason to live.
After spending six years in this misery and frustration of calling myself a writer but not writing, I finally flipped the table. I decided I had enough of this negative feeling that was going nowhere, nor was it letting my writing grow. I finally gave myself permission to keep every writing advice, course, and opinion aside and start writing.
Within three months, I was having the best writing time of my life. My confidence soared. I started to feel good enough and was improving with each passing day. And I knew my writing dream could be and is a reality that I can live. Later, it was during a journaling session that I realised my lesson.
Action begets confidence.
We have it all upside down. We assume (or are told) that one has to be confident before jumping into action. We have to be confident about doing the deed and have confidence through knowing that the result will be in our favour.
But what I learnt in those three months is that taking action results in confidence. It is through taking action that you build your capabilities and skills, which in turn gives you the surety to try hard and take risks. That improves you more, and therefore you try more. You don’t start good enough, but with consistent, persistent and deliberate practice, you become good enough. You begin to trust in yourself as a writer and in your writing dream.
Keep this cycle rolling enough times and that leads you to achieving and living your dream.
Why Writers Don’t Feel Good Enough?
There are a million reasons why writers don’t feel they are good enough to write their words.
Imposter syndrome. Rejection and lack of recognition. Writer’s block. Isolation. Lack of support. Financial struggles. High standards. Perfectionism. Comparison. Fear of failure. Fear of criticism. Unrealistic expectations. External pressure. Internal dissatisfaction.
What all this boils down to is the image of the struggling writer that’s ingrained in our minds and hurts our hearts.
Through the lives and stories of other artists, which get amplified and dramatised by media, we are fed that the life of a writer is an agonising one. Look at any movie or show featuring a writer, or pick up any book describing a writer’s life, and all you’ll notice is how stressed they are. When Ernest Hemingway says, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed,” that doesn’t conjure a good feeling in you as a writer. I don’t want to bleed when giving words to my thoughts and stories. And yet, that’s how writers and artists of all sorts are depicted.
So when we enter the writing arena, we unconsciously start to believe that we have to struggle with our writing and bang our heads on the wall until, by God’s grace, some words fall out. This doesn’t mean that the stories of the struggling artists of our past are untrue. It means that we don’t need to buy into them and make them our story.
This cliched image of an artist is what makes the people around us worried for us or use it as a weapon to derail us, and this is what makes us writers anxious. This is the root cause of our writing misery.
And how to undo this misery? — By taking focused action in favour of our writing dreams.
What Does It Mean To Take Focused Action To Increase Your Writer Confidence?
Start with establishing a routine. To get myself started on this writing journey, I planned a routine of writing and publishing one essay every day for the first six months. You can choose to write every day at a specific time. Or write X number of words per session. Or have a chapter or short story complete by the end of each week. What you are trying to do here is develop a consistent writing routine that will help instil a sense of discipline and commitment in you.
Set realistic goals. It’s ok to have an ambitious aim of writing the first draft of your novel, but break that down to smaller, manageable goals based on your current life phase. If writing for an hour every day is unfeasible at the moment, then don’t. Before making any writing plans, check in with your life first. See what you can shift around or change to make space for writing — physically, mentally and emotionally.
Prepare yourself to face challenges, fears and failures. No one, I repeat, no one is never not going to face any challenge or fear or failure. If they say they haven’t, then they are living boring, mundane, borderline-dead lives. A seed only grows into a flourishing tree once it has to push its way out of itself first and then out of the soil. Even after that, it continues to fight its way through harsh circumstances while it keeps growing. No life is easy; the life of a writer is no different.
Practice self-compassion. Writing can be mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting. It looks easy on the outside, but only we know the turbulence and anxiety that are going on within us. Putting words to your thoughts and feelings can be challenging because chances are you have to stay quiet for a long time. So now that you are finally giving yourself the space to speak, you are bound to feel uneasy. You have to go through this process to get all the gunk out that’s stored inside of you and free yourself and the writer within. So be kind to yourself. Treat yourself like the encouraging and caring friend you wish you had to help you through this writing journey. To sustain this journey, you need to have your own back.
Keep learning, but mindfully. Don’t make the mistake I did of continuing to learn because I believed I was not good enough. Learn about writing with the mindset of seeing this puzzle from different angles. I still read books on writing, but now I do it with the mindset of experiencing a different writing experience other than my own. There is no one-size-fits-all textbook on writing that we can read and be done with it. Every writer has their own take on their writing life, and reading about it enriches mine.
Read about other writers and artists. One of my favourite books on creative life is Daily Rituals by Mason Currey. The major lesson I learnt from that book is that you’ll never find the ideal time or space to work on your craft. You’ll have a noisy neighbourhood, you’ll have kids to take care of, you’ll have bills to pay, you’ll have obligations that will steal your time, and you’ll have a day job that might be sucking on your soul. And yet, you find ways to keep creating your art. Reading about writers and artists tells you that you are not only on this journey. Many before us had the same problems that you are currently facing, but only in a different packaging. Use this knowledge as motivation to believe in yourself and your writing and that you will make your writing dreams come true no matter what.
Celebrate your wins, no matter how small. With every writing session, with every finished chapter or essay, congratulate yourself. It doesn’t matter if your work feels rubbish; the fact that you worked on your writing project is a significant achievement. Whenever I feel I am not doing enough, I remind myself of the time I was doing nothing, and that puts life back in perspective. You are doing the best you can. Give what you have. Celebrate that.
Take breaks. This is a critical cookie that I am still having a tough time cracking. Taking breaks is crucial for our writer soul. When we are writing, we draw inspiration, motivation, and emotions from our inner creative well. Taking breaks gives us the chance to refill it. You want to have a thriving writing journey, so the last thing you want is to be running on fumes.
Write for yourself first. Whether I am writing my essays or my novels, I am writing them for the 12-year-old me, who would have greatly benefited from reading them. Writing for yourself first is essential because then you’ll write what is true to you. You won’t follow the latest trends or copy viral templates of others hoping to become a success. You won’t aim for virality; you’ll aim for impact. If what you write is true to you, then it’ll be true for others as well.
Ship your work. We have enough unfinished manuscripts in the world. Don’t add yours to the pile. Finish the projects you start and send them off into the world. If the project is a big one, like writing a book, then focus on finishing one chapter. Finish enough chapters, and you’ll have a finished book.
Keep your promise to yourself. If you say you are going to write today at 3 p.m., then make sure nothing comes in between you and your 3 p.m. appointment. When you say that you will give your writing dream your best, stick to it. Your subconscious, your inner child, is watching you. It is keeping note of what you’re saying and what you’re doing. And if they don’t match, it won’t chastise you, but it’ll learn not to trust you. Train yourself to be a man (or woman) of your word.
My book, Soul Writer vs. Social Writer, is out now!
