Fiction Scribe

You’ve started writing (congratulations!) but slowly, the voices of doubt plague you. Over time, you write less and less, becoming convinced that you wouldn’t have been successful with that story anyway, so why bother writing it…

Very similar to Confidence Complex, Mind on Failure is when you let your inner self discourage you from writing. Left undefended, your work will be put away to get dusty and you’ll just be left feeling discourage about ‘the whole writing thing’.

I think most writers, at one time or another, have dealt with doubts. Except for a few writers, doubts pretty much come part and parcel with the writing experience. The key is learning how to deal with them.

If your mind is on failure and the voices of doubt are plaguing you:

1. Remember why you’re writing. Money and fame are nice, sure, but if you’re writing for the joy of telling a story, then that should be the focus. Concentrate on that. Remember your inner storyteller and leave off the fame and fortune thoughts until you have the rough draft done.

2. Don’t let people read your rough draft! If you absolutely need some feedback, then go ahead, but if you don’t – keep a lid on it! Nothing will get you feeling crappy about your work faster than a bad review on something you haven’t finished writing.

3. Physically or mentally tell those voices to shove it. You don’t have time for voices of doubt; you have writing to do.

4. Identify who owns the voices. It may sound strange, but if you ‘listen’ hard enough, you may find that your ninth grade English teacher’s voice is telling you that you’re no good. Or maybe it was that jerk in school who picked on you. Maybe the voice even belongs to someone more personal – a family member. Identifying the voice(s) can give you a lot of help in figuring out how to combat it.

I think the biggest key for this one is to remember that no one can really tell you if you’re good or bad if you don’t even finish a piece in the first place…