Quieting the Negative Voices in Your Head

Impostor Syndrome: Defined by the oxford dictionary as the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills.

There is always a small person in the back of your mind who does everything in their power to talk you out of your own success. As a writer you will reason it away. You will blame play the success on your editor, your graphic artist, the insanity of people who came to see you.

Procrastination: Every author has a moment when their current project feels like that. I know I will, at some point in my current project convince myself it is no good and should be abandoned. But I don’t. 

I recently posted something on Facebook to the effect of having a runner’s high after writing, and it turns out, you do actually get one. A study from 2016 by Centennial College pointed to a likely release of endorphins after a good writing session.  

Being Introverted: It can be really hard to come out of people’s shells. If it were only about writing books, then it would sound like a perfect thing for introverts. However, there is the whole business side of things. You have to go out and talk to people, meet readers, talk at conventions, and all kinds of other things that require you to people. 

Taking on Too Much: For writers it is far worse than just that since on the back end we have things like editing, graphic arts, and then prospects for a series. As was perfectly stated, it is all the practical stuff after writing which is a time suck and we would love nothing more than to not have to do it. 

How do we keep ourselves from doing too many things? Focus on the thing you are passionate about. if you need to go off and  indulge your muse for a day or two, that is okay, but come back and finish! 

Overthink Everything: Spending most of the time writing a book under the misguided impression that it is a waste of time. We continue out of spite and I do this too. I convince myself that I have to finish this project.

At the end we go back and review what we have written to realize that it's not as bad as we think. Yes, sometimes we work ourselves into corners and are not entirely sure how to get ourselves out of it. But we do. And when we do, that magic happens, and it all works itself out right.

The ‘Day Job’ and Accepting What You Can't Change: Most writers have a day job. That is reality in the indie world and unless you are a retiree who doesn’t have a day job or you are independently wealthy, you are stuck in two worlds. 

Balance is important and that means making sure you don’t do so much that you wear yourself out. Yes, sometimes it will mean staying your hand and not submitting a short for a submission opportunity. It may mean you put in more hours on Monday so you can take off early on Friday to make it to the writing convention you want to go to.

https://indieauthorsupportanddiscussion.com/

To check out the study from 2016, CLICK HERE.

Ruth Coulson, Grace Hudson, Theresa Jacobs, Eric Lahti, Cherime MacFarlane, Max Power

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