Do you ever wonder if your writing is good enough? Like, every day? Do you sometimes wonder whether it’s not the publishing industry but YOU that is the problem? That maybe you don’t have it in you to succeed as a writer? That maybe you should have gone to law school after all? You could, after all be making $100+k ($200+ as a doctor!), taking vacations to Hawaii, and spending your weekends doing fun things like hiking and sailing instead of trying to squeeze blood from a computer.
Photo courtesy of **Mary** via Creative Commons
I have the fortune to work at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto with many talented (mostly published) authors. That’s both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I’m thrilled to rub shoulders with successful writers multiple times a week. On the other hand, the talent and success of those writers serves to remind me that I have not yet published a full-length book of my own (My short memoir, Runway, however, is for sale on Amazon for just $2.99 and you should drop everything and buy it right now. Then read it, write a review on Amazon, and meet me back here in two hours…)
You’re back! Great. Let’s continue…
So, how do I cope? I remind myself that “There is no such thing as a good or bad writer, just good and bad writing.” Everyone writes crappy sentences. Successful authors just have the experience to recognize they’re crappy and cut them. And when they don’t, their editors do. And successful authors spend a LOT of time writing. A LOT. They don’t piss away the hours on Facebook and Pinterest. They write. And write. And write some more. That’s how they get good. Someone once told me if you take enough photos, you’re going to get some great ones. The same goes for writing. If you write enough material, you can throw out all the crap and still have some wonderful stories.
Photo courtesy of Nicolas Raymond via Creative Commons
But back to every writer’s fear that he isn’t good enough. Walter Mosley once said that when he read the masters, he felt he could never write like them. But when he read The Color Purple, he thought, “I can do that.” And he did. We can’t compare ourselves to the greats. All we can do is write the best we can and work every day to improve upon that. And just think: it may be your story that inspires some aspiring young writer to one day think , “I can do that” and go out and do it.
What about you? Do you think your writing is “good enough” or do you suffer from self-doubt like every other writer in the world (including the published ones)?
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