In Writing--Faith Over Fear

 

 

Writers make mistakes as they move along their writing journey. None of us are totally immune to doing something we wished we hadn't in our writing life. 

Sometimes we hurry the process, and it shows. We don't present our best work when we move too quickly. Maybe we toss something in we think is correct but hadn't taken time to do a little checking or research. We could get called on it by a reader. We might grab a title quickly out of the air only to think of a much better one when it's too late. 

These are only a few of the mistakes we make. The more often that an error comes up, the more we fear moving on, or even trying to do so. This is when we need to give ourselves a pep talk. It's when we need to encourage faith in our own abilities. We need to put faith over fear. 

One of the best ways I know to increase your faith in yourself and decrease your fears in your writing life is to make two lists. List A should be made of all the things you fear about writing. In List B, show the pluses in your writing life, the good things that have happened, and what you feel are your strengths as a writer. On which list should you concentrate? That's a no-brainer question. 

We need to pump up our own confidence level and we should do it on a daily basis. Maybe then, we can start believing in ourselves. If you dwell daily on your mistakes and your fears about writing, what do you think will happen? Yes, you'll start convincing yourself that you cannot write well, that all you do is flub up. 

Learn to have faith in yourself. If you don't have it, no one else will have faith in you either. Editors and readers figure it out fairly easily when you write without confidence in what you can produce.

Let's go back to those lists. I said to concentrate on List B, but you might also want to go through the first list and address those fears, one by one. Ask yourself if the fear is justified or are you responsible for creating your own fear? If the fear is justified, what can you do about it? How can you change whatever that fear happens to be? 

Work at having faith over fear, and you'll be both a happier writer and a better one. 

Make Attitude Count In 2014

We're about to turn the page to 2014 which feels like opening a book you have never read before. You're not sure what the book will bring to you but you know you want to start on page one and keep moving on to find out. Same way with those new calendars that have been popping up in the mailbox the last several weeks. 

I looked for a poster and quote to use here today, looked long and hard, and finally settled on the one above. How could I go wrong with a quote from Albert Einstein? Nine words filled with wisdom and darned good advice. Which brings me to today's topic--attitude. Yesterday's post talked about reviewing your writing world of 2013. I asked you to look at the things you liked and those you didn't, then think about making changes.

One of the most important change is your attitude. My friend, Lenore Skomal, writes a column for the Erie-Times News in Erie, PA. In a recent video version, she made the comment If you say you can't, then you're right. We often talk ourselves into defeat before we ever begin. Easy enough to reverse the quote into If you say you can, you will. The hard part is that you can say it, but you must also believe it. That might take some practice. 

Make a poster on a sheet of paper of one of the sayings and place it where you see it every day. Put it where you darned near trip over it so there's no chance of missing it. Teachers use motivational posters on bulletin boards, classroom walls and doors, so why shouldn't you? Each one of us can use some motivation and having those words visible can only be helpful.

When I was sixteen, I worked in a dress shop for a man who used one phrase over and over again to motivate his sales staff. Beleive me, we girls got fed up with hearing Mr. Breen say Success comes in cans, not can'ts. He'd nod his head so hard when uttering those words that his jowls literally shook and we girls had to sometimes bite our lips to keep from laughing at the poor man. But his words have come back to me over and over again through the nearly six decades since I first heard them. Good advice again in a mere six words.

Attitude is nothing more than choice. You can choose to have a good day when you get up in the morning or you can choose to be a grump all day. Choose the more positive route and your life is going to be a lot more pleasant. Choose to believe that you are going to be a better writer this year, that you are going to submit more of your work to editors, and that you'll try new paths in writing. You'll most likely end up having more successes than failures.

Regarding those failures--take the positive attitude with them, too. They're not worthless. Uh-uh! You can learn from them if you step back and take a totally objective look to figure out the why and how whatever it was didn't make it. And you've got the bones of another piece of writing. Add more to it and maybe you'll turn it into a successful venture later on.

Stop listening to that voice of doom in your head that keeps telling you that you can't....... Kick that despairing voice right out the door and make positive choices. Make 2014 a year to remember.