When revolution is not possible, we have involution. Searching our innards for that seed of confidence and providing what it needs to sprout and flourish. So, what’s going on inside you? Creatively speaking.
The muse is a capricious tart. When they shine on you, it is glorious indeed, but they’re not reliable enough to fuel our creative output. So what then? Develop good habits that together form a robust writing practice. Art is work. It’s your work, so get your tush in the chair and do your job. And I absolutely subscribe to this advice because in the end, no one is going to write for you, unless you’re using generative A.I. in which case you are not actually a writer and you can see yourself out.
Now you’ve set aside a consistent time and place to write, you’re logging your progress, and the muse occasionally dips in for a romp, leaving you in dishevelled bliss that fades all too quickly. You take classes, learn, improve. You grow as a writer and you do feel good about that, so why can’t you finish your novel? Why does every sentence feel like an episode of sleep paralysis with all its accompanying demons? Why was it so much easier in the early days when words flew through your brain faster than your fingers could take them down and the idea of running out of ideas was laughable.
I’ll tell you why. It’s because you know too much. It’s easy to be confident when you don’t know what you don’t know. Sadly, students of the craft invariable reach a tipping point. You’ve learned enough to know that you don’t know anything. This is why most artists are clinically insane. Most scientists too, for that matter. And don’t come at me for making light of mental health issues. This is the writing life, and we didn’t choose it because we’re tactful, well adjusted normies.
The question becomes: how do we develop confidence along with craft? Because from where I’m standing it’s an inverse relationship. All that learning only seems to make me better at spotting bad writing, and that bad writing is usually my own. And that leads us to confidence building step one.
Ditch the binary. Calling your writing bad is reductive, lazy, and utterly unhelpful. Your work deserves a more nuanced critique and you’d never comment on anyone else’s work that way. You’d identify a clunky sentence with a sublime word choice. Or an interesting image that needs only a little clarity. No piece of writing is merely good or bad. We aren’t toddlers, and our study of the craft has taught us discernment, which I’ve learned is one of the most important skills a writer can develop. And this brings us to step number two.
You are not entitled to perfection. Especially in early drafts, but fucked if that’s not exactly what we expect. The only perfection to be had there is in its 100% success rate as a self-defeating strategy. We get so hung up on this. And honestly the literary gatekeepers aren’t helping with their stern warnings not to waste their time with anything that isn’t perfect. Who wants to read something perfect anyway? We’d all kill ourselves. The good news is that if you’ve managed to see any piece of writing, an essay, poem, or story, through to completion, you already have what it takes to overcome your sense of entitlement and accept your writing as a beautifully flawed work of art.
Embrace the suck! It’s the only way to let those moments of brilliance fly unfettered onto the page along with all the nonsense (like most of this essay). Learn to enjoy writing badly. The more you let go of the pursuit of perfection and wallow in the muck, the better your writing will get. You’ll realize it’s actually hard to write as badly as you think you do. Is it perfect? Will it ever be perfect? Hell, no. But it will get better, I promise you that.
And on that note, we have step three: for the love of Christ, stop editing as you go. Yeah, I called you out. I called myself out. We all know who we are. The anxious little goblins who write a page one day and edit for the next three because we think we’re saving time on the back end. I don’t have to tell you this doesn’t work. But Lola, how else is it going to get better, like you promised? Fix it in post, baby. Only when you’ve completed a draft are you properly informed to go back and revise. Who gives a shit if the language is passive, the pacing is off, and your characters are flat as a runover raccoon? Throw in a few [TK]’s if you really need to and move the fuck on.
Do I know everything? No. Do I know anything? Shockingly little, but I’m pretty sure about this. Imagination and creativity are wild things with wild impulses and trying to reduce them to ones and zeroes, or extrude them through your perfectionist birth canal is asking them to be what they fundamentally are not. The page will never mirror what’s in your head so release yourself from that expectation. Write your story. Then rewrite it. Rewrite again. Tell your story as best you can. My sweet duckies, this is the real secret: confidence doesn’t come from being perfect or even pretty good. It comes from joyfully embracing all that magnificent and endless room to grow.
~ Lola
