Does Writing Make you Feel Like a Failure or a Fraud? (How that Can Boost Your Creativity)

How feeling like a failure can make you more creativeIf writing makes you feel like a fraud or a failure, you may have experienced T. S. Eliot’s version of hell, where “nothing connects with nothing.”

Good!

No, I’m not crazy.

And I’m not kidding.

It is good.

Turns out these negative feelings are an essential part of the creative process.

So go ahead and wallow in them—at least for a little while.

Here’s why.

Before the breakthrough there has to be a block, according to Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works.

You may need to give up so you can move on.

Our brains actually need this “stumped” phase to realize that it’s time to try something new.

Then, and only then, can your brain search out new ideas to help you blast past that block.

So learn to recognize when feelings of fear or frustration mean that it’s time to stop.

Then surrender to the unknown.

Give your brain the break it needs to look elsewhere for inspiration.  (Click here for my previous post on using the brain’s reticular activating system to spur creativity)

“Creativity is the residue of time wasted,” according to Albert Einstein.

Einstein was right.

It is precisely this wasted time that often gives rise to insight, which is commonly known as the “eureka” or “aha” moment, according to Lehrer.

Working harder, with focused attention, when searching for new insight is simply the wrong strategy,

Yet how many times do we find ourselves sitting in front of the computer staring intently at the screen, trying to will something—anything–to happen.

You can’t force an aha moment to happen.

So stop trying.

Get up and get away for a while or work on something else.

As you begin to practice this strategy of letting go, you’ll train your brain to know when it’s time to search out new paradigms and new associations.

Soon those new ideas will be flowing freely.

Just don’t forget to come back and get to work.

Here’s the rub:  The epiphany or breakthrough is just the beginning.

Then the hard work begins.

This involves the other half of the creative tool box—focused attention and stick-to-it-iveness.

Focused attention gives you the ability to structure your writing and to be a ruthless editor, removing all the superfluous material and choosing the best words to get your point across.

These skills separate the pros from the amateurs.

The pros possess the ability to deal with the pain, the knowledge to take a break and then have the determination to get back to work, slogging through the tough stuff.

Remember–Frustration, fear and failure will always be just around the corner.

And that’s a good thing…

It just means your skills and abilities are about to grow.

Please share in the comments section how you’ve overcome your fears and frustrations so we can all learn from your experience.

Cheryl Craigie is the new Contributing Editor for Write to Done. She’s a former broadcasting and foundation executive who left the fast track to build a life in the mountains of North Carolina. She’s kept a journal most of her life and has written numerous articles, blog posts, editorials, grants, newsletters, personal essays, scripts, short stories, and speeches.  She describes herself as a mountain-hiking, guitar-playing, bird-watching, cat and dog lover.

Her blog is called, The Manageable Life. The tagline says it all:  ”Choose to live better”.

Now that’s Cheryl’s on board, we’ve got lots of exciting plans in the works. Here are just a few examples:

  • Amping up our content based on suggestions from our new DreamTeam. Click here for more information about the DreamTeam and to sign up if you haven’t already done so.
  • Developing Resource Pages. Soon you’ll find a carefully curated selection of our favorite writing books, journals, etc., available directly from our site. However, if you want to purchase Imagine:  How Creativity Works now, click here. (For Kindle edition, click here). We receive a small commission on sales from Amazon.
  • Creating online courses which will help you overcome your fear, jumpstart your creativity and polish your writing. We’re just in the beginning stage of content development, so please be patient. We don’t want to roll these out until we’re confident that they meet our exacting standards.

Stay tuned for more details.

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The Definitive Guide to Successful Online Writing

Do you ever think about giving up on writing?

On some days does being a writer just feel like a big struggle?

This is a normal reaction.

We live in a fast, information-filled world that bombards us with a constant stream of technology. We’re told about countless things we “must” do in order to succeed as a writer.

It’s overwhelming.

You may find yourself wondering…

a) is writing the right choice for me?
b) do I even have the writing skills necessary to “make it?”
c) what do I really need to know about writing to succeed?

Well, guess what?

The Write Guide for a Stumble-free Path to Success will point you in the right direction so you can pick yourself, stop second guessing yourself, and get you moving onto a smoother writing path to success.

Read on to learn how.

Every topic in this post will give you an important piece of the writing puzzle. Put them all together and you will have the complete view of what you need to succeed as a writer.

This guide gives you clear steps, insight, and beneficial ideas, that help you understand your strengths as a writer. Plus, you will learn some of the most important skills for writing in today’s world so you don’t have to waste anymore time going off your path.

And there’s more. This guide gives you personal attention. We are all different, so generic advice just doesn’t cut it. That’s why The Write Guide for a Stumble-free Path to Success is designed to help you discover what’s important to you personally, as well as just how you can keep yourself intact while navigating through the Internet writing jungle.

All the articles we link to in each chapter provides information that is easy to grasp, straightforward, and unmissably useful.

Are you ready to stop stumbling and start moving smoothly?

Okay. Let’s do it!

Introducing:

The Write Guide for a Stumble-free Path to Success

You may use this guide by clicking on any of the chapter links below to jump straight to a topic or you might choose to start at the beginning and read through to the end.

Chapter 1. Your Personal Writing Road
Chapter 2. Your Writing Kickstart
Chapter 3. Online Writing that Works
Chapter 4. Blogging Essentials
Chapter 5. Get it Done
Chapter 6. Keeping the You in Your Writing
Chapter 7. Bonus – Notch Up Your Creativity

Chapter 1. Your Personal Writing Road

To know if you are a successful writer you must have a personal definition of what success is and it’s important to know where your specific strengths lie. The tips and information in this chapter will help you with this.

Chapter 2. Your Writing Kickstart

As a writer, sometimes you need a kickstart or some secret insights to rev yourself up so you can keep moving on your path to success. Use the topics in this chapter to get your writing engine going.

Chapter 3. Online Writing that Works

Here are your simple tips and methods for writing in today’s world so no more unexpected pitfalls. These ideas work, are easy to use, and will help give you the confidence you need to stay on your writing journey.

Chapter 4. Blogging Essentials

Most writers today who are trying to succeed online, at one point or another, are also bloggers, or at least contribute to other blogs. Here are the essentials you need to you can write content that generates traffic, readers, and conversions or sales.

Chapter 5. Get it Done

Writers often have so many creative ideas in their head they either feel blank, don’t know where to begin, or get so scattered they don’t complete projects. Use the following information to get your writing done.

Chapter 6. Keeping the You in Your Writing

Don’t lose yourself in the writing jungle. It’s important to keep your ideas intact because your unique voice is what the world most needs from you as a writer.

Chapter 7. Bonus – Notch Up Your Creativity

Every writer, newbie or seasoned, needs a creative boost now and then. Feel free to use the ideas in this chapter whenever you need them.

Your writing path does not have to be such a struggle. Let this resource ease you past the potential pitfalls so that your writing journey will be long, prosperous, and filled with joy.

What aspect of writing are you struggling with? Let us know in the comments below.

A guest post by Karen Daniels, topselling amazon author and online writing coach who blogs at zencopy.com. Check out her free Authors Writing and Branding Resource.

Amazing Advice for Aspiring Writers by Neil Gaiman

Every once in a while we get to hear great advice from someone who’s actually done what we hope to do–achieve extraordinary writing success.

So check out the video below.

In what has been described as “one of the best commencement speeches ever, ” author Neil Gaiman shares his thoughts about how build a creative life.

Gaiman started his unconventional career as a jounalist and then went on to create, among many other things, the  ground-breaking Sandman comics series and the children’s book Coraline, which became an Oscar-nominated film.

Gaiman encourages us to:

  1. Be wise
  2. Make amazing mistakes
  3. Break rules
  4. Leave the world a more interesting place, and
  5. Make good art

Do yourself a favor and  watch this 20 minutes video. You’ll have the rare opportunity to hear from one of the most creative voices in recent years.

(If you are receiving this post via email, click here to view)

What do you think about this video? Please share in the comments.

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The Pros and Cons of Comparing Yourself to Other Writers

A guest post by K.M. Weiland of Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors

With the advent of writing communities on such networking sites as Twitter and Facebook and half a thousand forums and Nings, writers are perhaps more social and less solitary than at any time in our history.

This brings its fair share of both benefits and drawbacks, since our easy access to other writers—both those who are striving to be published and those who have a dozen bestsellers under their belts—causes inevitable comparisons.

Are we as good as they are?

Are they as good as we are?

Let’s explore what we can gain from answering these questions, as well as the pitfalls to avoid.

Cons

Jealousy: Easily, the most destructive con of comparison is that of jealousy. Sometimes this jealousy is the simple result of having read a book that spun its tale with such gossamer characters and seamless themes that we were left astonished.

We look at this brilliant author’s perfect prose, and we hate them just because they’re so much better than us. Or perhaps a writing buddy has just nailed a plum contract with the Agent of the Year. What did she do to deserve that honor, especially when—let’s be honest here—her writing leaves a lot to be desired compared to ours?

Jealousy is a flaw common to the vast majority of writers (due largely to the next con on our list), but it’s one that gets us exactly nowhere. The sooner we can stand up to our feelings of jealousy, put them behind us, and work toward being genuinely happy for our fellow writers, the more content and the more productive we’ll be.

Because, let’s face it, there’s always someone who’s better, richer, or luckier than we are. Jealousy is a never-ending melodrama of pain and pettiness.

Inferiority: Perhaps the reason jealousy is so prevalent among authors is that it almost always follows on the heels of its kissing cousin: inferiority. Very few writers are able to maintain perfect confidence in their skill.

When we run across a writer whose prose is more effortless than ours, whose characters are more realistic, whose paychecks are larger, and whose accolades are louder, we can’t help but compare. And when we find ourselves wanting, we either want to plot laborious and exhaustive murder for the object of our comparison, or we want to crumple in a corner and bawl at our general wretchedness. Sometimes both.

In one sense, this chronic inferiority complex is actually a positive thing, since it keeps us honest. As Orson Scott Card put it in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, “Writers have to simultaneously believe the following two things: The story I am now working on is the greatest work of genius ever written in English. The story I am now working on is worthless drivel.”

Maintaining humility in our work is crucial to our genuineness as artists. But we can’t take this too far. We have to be able to reach a place of objectivity from which we can honestly compare our work to other writers, glean what we can from that comparison, or, if there’s simply nothing to be gained (as would be the case if we, say, compared the latest advance on our books to Stephen King’s), shrug it off as the inconsequentiality it is.

Pros

Inspiration: Comparing ourselves to other writers isn’t all bad. So long as we keep the downfalls in mind and are prepared to avoid them, we can actually gain a number of benefits from considering our fellow writers and how we measure up against them.

Honestly, can you imagine living entirely segregated from writerkind?

That would mean no books to read.
No fellow crazies to understand our quirks and obsessions.
No writerly energy to feed off.

We gain our inspiration from the art of others, from hearing about our writing buddies’ struggles, and from bouncing ideas back and forth.

If I were to write a thank you note to every author I’ve read, loved, and inevitably compared myself too, I probably wouldn’t have time to finish my next novel. Because most of us write the kind of books we enjoy reading, we are constantly reading books that are similar to our own. We recognize similar elements, compare them, and learn how to improve our own characters, plot, and prose as a result.

It’s a win-win situation, because who’s to say our mentors may not someday read one of our stories and find some similarity that brings that next epiphany to their writing?

Motivation: Once we get over the crumpling and crying brought on by our sense of inferiority in comparing ourselves to great writers, our next step is to rise from the ashes, pen in hand, motivated to blot out the very reason for our inferiority. The brilliance of this other author isn’t a boulder to crush us; it’s a mountain to scale.

Perhaps today we’re not good enough to be mentioned in the same breath with our heroes, but, you know what? If they can do it, so can we!

Reading great writers and comparing their brilliant stories to my own has been one of the single greatest factors in motivating me to keep writing, keep learning, keep trying. Nothing is more exciting to the dedicated writer than reading good fiction. Good stories excite us and drive us forward. We close the covers on a good book, and the first thing we want to do (after buying the sequel) is run to our keyboards and funnel all that inspiration and motivation into our own writing.

As with so many things in the writing life, successfully comparing ourselves to other writers is all about balance. If we can tamp a lid on the cons and embrace the pros, we can use the success of our fellows to launch ourselves to even greater heights.

It should be the goal of every writer to be comparison worthy. Hearing someone say, “I wish I could write as well you,” isn’t only the highest of compliments, it’s also a sign you’re giving back to the writing community the benefits you drew from it yourself.

About the Author: K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.
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4 Reasons to Appreciate Your Self-Doubts

A guest post by Joan Dempsey of Literary Living

Let’s face it – every one of us experiences self-doubt, even the most well-established writers. Dean Koontz, for instance, an author who has sold more than 400 million books and is one of the most highly paid writers in the world, says “I have more self-doubt than any writer I know.”

And Alice Munro, the celebrated Canadian writer who’s been called our Chekhov, worries every time she finishes writing a book that she’ll never write again.

Let’s agree, then, that self-doubt is an ordinary part of every writer’s experience, even yours. You’ll never be without it. The question is, what can you learn from it?

Here are four reasons to appreciate your self-doubt.

1. Self-Doubt is a Protective Instinct

Self-doubt arises out of your own instinctive desire to protect yourself, which is actually a nice impulse that you probably don’t often acknowledge. We usually bemoan or bludgeon our self-doubt; we believe what writer Sylvia Plath famously claimed, that “the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

I beg to differ!

You can be more creative if you welcome and examine your self-doubts.

It’s true, though, that we writers allow our doubts to keep us away from our work. Why? To protect ourselves from pain. Author James Baldwin says we’re good at fooling ourselves because we don’t want to get hurt. “We don’t want to have our certainty disturbed,” he said.

Psychologists call this self-handicapping . If you stay away from your work you’ll never have to face the pain of writing poorly, or you can fool yourself into thinking you’ll be a great writer if you do get down to work.

The problem with that, though, is that you’ll never really be a writer. Baldwin believed that the trick is to know when you’re fooling yourself.

The best writers live an examined and therefore honest life, and that includes scrutinizing your self-doubt.

2. Self-Doubt Sounds an Alarm

Not unlike a smoke detector, self-doubt alerts us to the presence of fear, the typical cause of our doubts.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a well-known Buddhist teacher, advises us that because fear is a natural and constant presence in our lives, we’d do well to welcome it rather than fight it:

It is best not to say, “Go away, Fear. I don’t like you. You are not me.” It is much more effective to say, “Hello Fear. How are you today?”

The next time you feel self-doubt, don’t despair or fight – look around to see what might be smoldering; be grateful for the alarm.

3. Self-Doubt is a Call to Action

Dean Koontz is notorious for obsessively polishing his paragraphs. “I began this ceaseless polishing out of self-doubt,” says Koontz, “as a way of preventing self-doubt from turning into writer’s block: by doing something with the unsatisfactory page, I wasn’t just sitting there brooding about it.”

In Koontz’s case, feeling uncertain about his abilities actually motivated him to take an action he might otherwise not have pursued.

Similarly, Write-to-Done Chief Editor, Mary Jaksch, believes that a “healthy dose of self-doubt, of not knowing” can lead writers to the “edge of creativity” by not allowing us to stay complacent.

I learned this first-hand through kayaking. After more than twenty years of paddling, I finally took a safety class. I realized I’d avoided such a class because I was afraid I wouldn’t have the strength to learn the appropriate skills. But the longer I kayaked, the more my fears began to be about saving someone’s life. I knew I didn’t have the right skills to be safe and those doubts about my ability became my call to action. I took a safety course and before long I was happily flipping over in my boat, certain I had the skills to save myself from drowning.

4. Self-Doubt Provides Fresh Perspective

If you keep your doubts to yourself you’re missing a valuable opportunity. By sharing your doubts with friends and writing colleagues you’re bound to get a fresh perspective. Others often don’t see your failings or uncertainties in the same way you do.

By sharing your doubts you’ll likely learn something new about yourself, feel companioned, hear a helpful cheer, or receive a much-needed boost to your self-esteem.

James Baldwin, in discussing why he writes, says he does so to describe. What he means is that by describing something in detail you come to understand it intimately. Describe your doubts in writing, or through dialogue – either way, your new understanding can help disarm your doubts.

The next time self-doubt keeps you away from your writing, try this:

  • Review these four reasons to appreciate your doubts;
  • Say “Hello, self-doubt, how are you today”; and
  • Get to work.

What have you learned from your self-doubts?

Joan Dempsey is a writer and the founder of Literary Living, an online program for serious, aspiring writers who want to overcome resistance and self-doubt to create a unique writing life. Sign-up for more information, a free audio interview with Leo Babauta, and a free e-book, The Power of Deliberate Thinking: 5 Strategies for Staying at the Writing Desk (Despite Your Self-Doubts)