By: Joelle Charbonneau
Yesterday on twitter, I was having a discussion with a
friend who’s writing a novel. She was
about ready to chuck the book and start over with a new idea because she
thought the book sucked. NOOOOOOOO!!!!! I jumped up and down, set my hair on fire
(no, not literally, but you get the idea) and told her not to. Why?
Because every writer thinks their story is worthless at some point in
the process. We all think the book is
boring and that the characters are completely unbelievable. Yep….we all think we are the world’s worst
writer and that we should just stop writing now and save ourselves and the
entire reading population the agony of continuing with our current project.
We all suck.
We all think we can’t write.
We all want to give up.
Writing isn’t a magical experience. No one sprinkles an author with fairy dust or
waves a wand, which makes all the words on the page crackle with
excitement. (Although, if anyone ever
discovers that fairy dust exists, feel free to send some my way!) Every writer has a different process and
voice. But the one thing that is the
same is that we are all plagued by self-doubt.
And there’s only one way to combat it.
You have to refuse to give in.
You tune out the voices that tell you not to continue the story and you
sit down and write. You add words to the
page. You push and pull and drag your
characters forward even when you want to cry with frustration because you think
your writing is crap. Because chances are
it is better than you think. And even if
it is crap—well, you can fix it later.
But only after you’ve written the entire story and reached the magical
land of THE END.
I wish I could offer some sort of potion you could drink to
make the middle-of-the book-author-doubts disappear. Since I wasn’t all that great at chemistry,
the only thing I can do is offer a few thoughts about what to do or not do in
order to keep moving forward.
1)
Remind yourself that EVERY author thinks they
are the world’s worst writer when they are writing a book. And not just a book…EVERY book. We all think we suck every time and that
someone is going to finally figure it out and kick us to the curb.
2)
Safeguard your work until you are ready to get
other opinions. Don’t show your pages to
people while you are in the period of self-doubt. Nothing they tell you—positive or
negative—will help. Trust me. If you are in the down spiral of doubt, you
will assume all positive comments are offered because someone is just being
nice and the negatives are the reader’s way of telling you to give up now
before you embarrass yourself further.
Yep…the doubts will get worse no matter what the feedback. Giving your pages to someone else during this
phase is your subconscious’s way of looking for a reason to give up. And you aren’t going to give up…are you?
3)
Repeat this phrase—“I will get to THE END.” Now say it again. One more time. Write it on a sticky note and tape it to your
computer. Make a promise that you will
give yourself a fabulous reward if you reach the final words of your story and
stick to the pledge that you can’t have whatever that thing is until you get
there. You will get to the end, but only
if you keep moving the story forward.
4)
Find me on Twitter or Facebook. Tell me when you are struggling and I’ll do
my best to push you back in front of the keyboard. When you are done at the end of the day, I
will cheer. We can all use a cheering
section! Let me be yours.
5)
Celebrate every day that you don’t give into the
“I am the world’s worst writer” doubt.
Because you know what—each time you defy that internal critic and put
words on the page you are proving that you are something very important. You are a writer. And, whether the words are good or bad,
writers write. And we get to The
End. Because every story needs an end…and
if you’re like me, no matter how much you think it sucks, you really want to
know how your story will turn out.
