One of the most important elements of great writing is confidence. It’s pretty much in line with just about any endeavor. However, the irony is that many writers struggle with confidence, as many of them are unsure of their skills and extremely afraid of being rejected or criticized, which in turn leads to many unpublished drafts, unsent manuscripts, and unfinished articles. If you’re one of these writers stuck in a rut due to lack of self-confidence, here are 5 ways that can help you:
1. Do some introspection
You can’t fix anything if you don’t know which part is broken. So, if you’re having issues with your confidence, you first need to know exactly what is causing you to lose faith in your own skills. Simply saying “I suck at this” to yourself is the worst thing you can do, because not only is it too vague, it’s also a very convincing lie. Your first step is to be honest and make a list of all of your strengths and weaknesses. Are you good with writing humor but severely disadvantaged with technical writing? Or do you have problems with vocabulary and spelling? Once you list the things that are affecting your self-esteem, you can start addressing them one by one.
2. Set realistic goals
There are people who can set ambitious goals and never lose hope along the way, but different people – different strokes, as they say. The norm is for people who get their hopes and self-esteem dashed to the ground if they set their sights too high. If you’re having problems with confidence, this might be the cause. So, set more realistic expectations in the meantime. Instead of targeting a best selling novel, simply target finishing a draft, and once you’ve achieved that goal, set getting published as the next, then set a number of sales, and so on and so forth. Each little victory will help boost your victory while at the same time, failure won’t be too much of a disappointment.
3. Proofread and rewrite
One of the best paths to increased confidence is accepting your flaws and working your butt off to correct them. As a writer, you do this by taking a microscope to your work and being your own harshest critic, but instead of considering every single mistake as proof that you’re bad at writing, treat it as challenges that you can overcome.
4. Stop comparing yourself to others
Constantly comparing either your skills or your work’s success with others’ is a recipe for poor self-esteem. As a writer, the only one you should be competing against is yourself. Or a much better approach is not to see the endeavor as a competition, but as a mission to satisfy the reader or express your thoughts.
5. Accept that it won’t be easy
Finally, you should be more willing to accept that nothing good will ever come easy. Accept that the inherent difficulty in things will make you fail once or twice, but shouldn’t affect your willingness to try in the future or your sense of self-worth. You should also accept that increasing your confidence could take a lot of effort and you’re not going to succeed on the first try either. As with any successful author, you have to work at it.
Image credit: Travis Wise on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0
Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.