Tag Archive for: confidence

The Write Life: Creative Confidence

The main difference between finishing a project and not is often confidence. The confidence we feel about our creative work is what keeps us going through the hiccups, the rough days, and the multiple revisions. It helps us make choices, stick with them, and show our work to other people. Confidence in our creativity is what gets us to write in the first place—and what sees us through to the end.

Friends, let me tell you, this month my creative confidence has been shaky.

It’s no great secret I’m a planner by nature. (Have you been around here for ten seconds? I talk about it constantly and probably have it documented in a spreadsheet.) I leave space in all my writing plans for some serendipitous pantsing—a connection or worldbuilding detail that blooms as I draft and will be folded in to enhance what’s already planned—but by and large, I draft an outline, I set a scene list, and I follow that basic structure.

The reason I follow that structure is not because that’s the way I should write, it’s because, largely, it’s a solid structure! I know what I’m doing when I plan out a story. I’ve internalized story structure through all my watching and reading and studying, so that when I record my plan and step through the story, everything makes sense and builds to satisfying climaxes and resolved character arcs. When I start rearranging the furniture as I draft, it becomes very obvious why I arranged the events in this order in the first place.

It’s been frustrating this month when my brain just hasn’t wanted to write the scene that way. When I get stuck in a moment and can’t find my way out without inventing a new twist or direction in the plot. When I think the timeline is both too long and too short because (wait for it)… I lost my creative confidence.

The problem isn’t that my story plan was wrong or weak or lacking in any way. My problem is that I’m having difficulty in other areas of my life and it’s shaking my confidence. Since writing comes from our emotions and current headspace, mental health is key to a writer’s ability to write. When stress, anxiety, or depression affects us, it can stop us in our tracks in huge ways unless we can find some way to maintain our creative confidence.

I’m regaining it in fits and spurts—and I’m almost through this chapter that’s been plaguing me—but creative confidence is an ongoing struggle. If you’ve been struggling with your confidence, I hope you can find some solace in knowing you’re not the only one and I hope you find your confidence again soon.

 

 

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The Write Life: Finding Focus

My writing life has been very scattered of late. While I still have writing time planned daily and I haven’t broken my streak (still at least 250 words a day every day, just like the last several years), what I’ve been working on has been haphazard. After I finished my last writing project in early March, I’ve been struggling to focus on the next project.

  • I’ve started an outline and draft for another writing workshop.
  • I’ve revisited my next novel outline and taken a few notes on what threads I may need to reevaluate as I draft.
  • I’ve dawdled with a new short story.
  • And I’ve drafted the beginnings of a few new blog posts.

But I’ve had a lot of difficulty sticking with anything. (Or finishing anything, as you might have noticed how many times I said “started” or “beginning” in that list.)

The end of last year and beginning of this year has been really rough on my mental health. I’m starting to come out of the worst of it and am reassessing my schedules and routines to find better ways to ground and care for myself. (Sleep. Sleep has been a BIG problem.) But it’s difficult to focus on writing when my mental health is so out of whack. (Not to mention that the lack of sleep finally caught up with me and I’m sick for the first time in two years.)

A writing life is about a lot more than ideas in the brainpan and words on the page. It encompasses a whole lot of other things—priorities, time management, mental and physical health. When one of those things is out of whack, it’s hard to have a bountiful and satisfying writing life. I mean, the mechanical side is there—I’m putting words on the page every day—but the focus to finish and the confidence to keep going through a hiccup? Those are the things I’m struggling with.

When I’m experiencing this kind of struggle, I allow myself a little grace, focusing on just 250 words per day and not pushing beyond that. I also release my grip on “what counts” as writing and am more likely to include stream-of-conscious brainstorming, notes, and questions. (Hey, all those words eventually get me to the finished story, so why not count them?) The last thing I do—and the thing that often helps the most during these times of struggle—is I follow my attention.

If I want to capture the ideas for a presentation on writing time travel fiction (slotted for May with the Orange County Public Library, register here for the virtual workshop), I work on that instead of the project I’m “supposed” to be working on. That allows me to capture some of the excess thoughts cluttering my head and reduces the number of things distracting me. Hopefully I only need to do this for a day or two, and then I can resume my regularly scheduled writing. (But sometimes it takes more time to get a brain back on track.)

These little “vacations” are what I do instead of taking a break from my words, but for anyone not chaining together a consecutive streak of thousands of days of writing—a break is probably a really good idea!

Mostly this month I’ve been working on ways to bring my physical and mental health in line, including drinking more water, making more time for mindfulness, and doing my very best to accept that some days any effort is my best effort.

What have you been doing to care for yourself in your writing life?

 

For full access to The Write Life, sign up on Patreon for $1 or more per month. You’ll also receive a personalized thank you in a future edition of The Write Life.

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