How to Avoid Being Overly Self-Conscious About Your Writing
I get it. You want your writing to be perfect. You don’t want someone to come along and tell you it could be better.
So you’re on your 4th edit just to be sure that everything little jot and tittle is correct (“jot and tittle” means every tiny detail.)
If you’re on a 4th edit and you’re rounding your way to number 5 that could be a tell.
Sometimes we can get in the way of our own work being good and successful. We get overly self-conscious about it and we want every little thing to be perfect and before we know it we’ve actually destroyed the thing we were first working on.
We “perfected” it. And in the processes killed the original work.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had this happen to you but hear this scenario.
I spent one hour on a project and just sent it out on a whim not really caring about it and everyone loved it.
Versus,
I spent months and months grueling over another project correcting every small detail. I spent hours upon hours slaving over it till I was sure it was my life’s masterpiece.
I sent it out to the cheering masses! *crickets*
What happened?!
Sometimes when we are overly self-conscious about a thing, that’s not a good sign and we should avoid putting too much time into “perfecting” it.
Perfect is the enemy.
What is perfect?
It literally means not one error. It’s perfect.
Is it really possible for us to write anything that’s perfect?
I mean in theory, maybe, but realistically?!
People are so subjective. It is like throwing a handful of skittles (taste the rainbow) at a bunch of colored holes one time and hopping every single one landed into the right colored hold on the very first throw.
Can it be done? Sure. Will it likely be done by you or me, probs’ not.
So don’t worry about your work being perfect. Not everyone is going to like it anyway. Just give it to the people that do like it and give them more.
Not Everyone is going to like our writing, no matter how hard we try to please everyone.
I’m sorry. It’s just true. If we are trying to write our space cowboy novel for everyone in the world to love and enjoy, then we have already failed. It’s just never gonna happen!
I may like space cowboys and you may like space cowboys, but my wife, um no, not so much.
She will continue to like decorating and organizing on a level that I’ll never fully comprehend.
But that’s okay!
That’s why it’s fun to be able to make all kinds of content and just find the right people that will love your content because it aligns with what they already like.
Look for people that are going to like what you’re writing because it’s what they want to read about, not because you made it so that everyone “should” like it.
Don’t spend your time worrying about kicking down that door. It’s not worth it. Trust me.
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Ignore the Trolls.
When you are writing in your room, trolls will come to your window and they will heckle every idea and thought you have for your project.
Ok, not real trolls. Cyber trolls. People that have no apparent life other than the sole purpose of finding content creators to criticize all day and night.
They do it so well and so often you have to assume someone is paying them. They couldn’t afford the time otherwise.
Maybe it’s a conspiracy: The T.R.O.L.L. Org. is hot on the case making sure every content creator has at least three trolls that have the availability 24/7, rain or shine, snow or hail, fast internet, or slow to make sure your work gets way overly criticized.
Ignore them.
Ignore your inner critic.
It happens when we’re young. Someone says something mean about something we’ve created. Something we care about. It devastates us.
We spend the rest of our lives shutting out the voice they created in our heads that constantly shouts, “You’re not good enough. This is trash. Nobody will ever read this. Do this. Grab a garbage can, open the lid, throw it in, replace the lid and go binge Netflix like the rest of us.”
It feels like that. Like the inner voice just wants us to give up. We don’t want to feel the ridicule of people making fun of what we poured ourselves into, our work.
So we overcomplicate every little line and never give the thing a chance at seeing daylight.
If we just would have hit the publish button or sent the fanfic to the readers we could have seen how people reacted.
We could have learned what our fans like and what they are doing and then written to them in a way that is geared towards their preferences.
Ignore negative comments. Just keep moving forward and find the people that do like what you’re doing.
Just remember, it’s really easy to mock someone else’s work. Is really hard to create something amazing. Wouldn’t you rather be the person that created something amazing?
It’s okay to be proud of your work.
Being proud of what you’ve accomplished is good. Being arrogant and constantly bragging and rubbing it into other people’s faces is bad.
Being humble about your writing doesn’t mean you sit there and trash talk your work and constantly deprecate it in your own mind.
Being humble is just not being arrogant. If other people want to say nice things about what you’ve done that’s great.
You don’t have to be overly self-conscious about your work because you like it and want to share it with others.
You can just share it and then learn from how they react and respect their opinions.
When you put your writing out there, someone is going to say something negative.
There are too many trolls for this not to happen so just be ready for it.
It’s not easy to ignore and only you can decide how you will react, I recommend ignoring it, but it is hard.
Be ready. Someone will talk bad about your work. The best way to overcome it and be the bigger person is to create more. Of course, learn from real mistakes, but be careful taking advice from someone that never writes or is really bad at writing and then they come to you and criticize what you’ve done.
Don’t forget to enjoy creating things.
It’s good to feel the enjoyment of finishing a thing and enjoy the feeling of accomplishing goals, but I also want to point out that getting out of our own heads sometimes means remembering.
We who are overly self-conscious need to remember the enjoyment of just simply creating a story.
Maybe it’s been a long time since you just sat down to write a short story just to capture a moment, a memory, or a teaching to keep for yourself or share with others.
Creating can be a lot of fun, but when we get overly loaded down with what others might think about it, we ourselves start to question too harshly the validity of our own creativity.
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- It’s easy to get started! No previous experience or degree required to start.
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Check out Writing Paychecks to see if you can start getting paid to write today.
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That’s all for the moment.
Hope this helps.
Happy writing!
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