Lack of Confidence ~ A Barrier to Success

Thank you so much for stop­ping by.  

I don’t know why, but one of the most dif­fi­cult bat­tles I per­son­ally have to fight reg­u­larly is my ever-present defi­ciency in confidence.

Grow­ing up, I can remem­ber my par­ents telling me that I could do any­thing I set my mind to. That noth­ing is impos­si­ble to me, if I were will­ing to work hard.

Despite all that, I suf­fer more than my share of inse­cu­rity. It’s a mystery.

Instead of dwelling on my short­com­ings, how­ever, I’m mak­ing an effort to take the advice of my folks and work hard toward build­ing my self-assurance arsenal.

In this busi­ness of com­mer­cial writ­ing, one can never have too great a sup­ply of con­fi­dence when fight­ing the con­stant attack from self-doubt.

So how does one build confidence?

By learn­ing all you can, and prac­tic­ing your craft—continuously.

My husband’s a bowler. He eats, sleeps and breathes bowl­ing. He reads about bowl­ing, takes bowl­ing work­shops, and stud­ies pro­fes­sional bowlers to emu­late. His obses­sion can get a lit­tle annoy­ing at times, but it keeps him out of my hair so I can write in peace. And that’s a good thing, too.

Any bowler will tell you the sport of bowl­ing is an emo­tional one, just like writ­ing.

If you don’t have con­fi­dence in your abil­ity, you just can’t get that ball to travel the speed and angle needed to knock all ten of those pins down. The poorer you do, the more agi­tated you get with your­self. When that hap­pens, you might as well pack up your balls and shoes, and go home.

The more you prac­tice, the bet­ter you per­form, and there­fore have less cause for get­ting upset with your­self. The bet­ter you do, the more con­fi­dent you become. Then things start to hap­pen. The qual­ity of your per­for­mance begins to improve until one day you become a winner.

And that’s what we all want, to be win­ning writers!

So my advice to all of us is to keep learn­ing, prac­tic­ing, and mov­ing for­ward toward our ulti­mate goal of becom­ing the best darn writ­ers we can be.

Please share your advice on build­ing self-confidence. What works for you?

Posted in Writing ~ Tools of the Trade | 24 Comments

Current Work in Progress

Thanks for stopping by. 

Cur­rently, I’m work­ing on a brand new con­tem­po­rary erotic romance, which I’ve titled: Reck­less Dreams.

It’s about a woman, Sally Fos­ter, who yet again finds her­self unable to meet her family’s expec­ta­tions when she dis­cov­ers her fiancé, their golden boy, in bed with another woman.

Detec­tive Alex Math­ews, with a tragic past, sees an acci­dent wait­ing to hap­pen when fate lands him in the direct path of one endear­ing woman’s reck­less dis­re­gard for self-preservation.

As these two weary souls, resolved to a future less than that of their dreams, dis­cover accep­tance in each oth­ers arms, they must fight an abun­dance of neg­a­tive forces deter­mined to pre­vent them from achiev­ing their happily-ever-after.

 

Posted in Works in Progress | 2 Comments

Critiquing ~ Weighing the Benefits

Wel­come to my first per­sonal blog post.
Thank you for stop­ping by. My topic today is Cri­tiquing. What a dif­fer­ence the process has made to me and in the qual­ity of my writing.
Like a lot of writ­ers, I tend to be a lit­tle intro­verted, well actu­ally, I’m a cave dweller at heart. But that’s a sub­ject for another day. It took awhile before I was brave enough to share my work with oth­ers.  No mat­ter how easy some make it out to be, it is scary that first time to open your­self up to criticism.
In the begin­ning, your con­fi­dence is already in tat­ters, if you’re like most of us with an abun­dance of rejec­tion let­ters in our writ­ing files. The last thing you need is to be told all the things that are wrong with your prose.
Hav­ing an open mind, view­ing the remarks on a pro­fes­sional level rather than tak­ing them per­son­ally, and part­ner­ing with the right group of peo­ple can make the expe­ri­ence of cri­tiquing very rewarding.
There are dif­fer­ent approaches, and some just do not work for all peo­ple. Per­son­ally, I like cri­tique groups, as opposed to indi­vid­ual partners.
Usu­ally, there are a few in the group who enjoy shar­ing their work with each other, and often par­tic­i­pate on the side. I enjoy that, too.
The advan­tage of being part of a group, in my opin­ion, is that you don’t have to feel guilty if you’re too busy to par­tic­i­pate. There are oth­ers who can fill the void when you have to bow out.
In a well-organized cri­tique group there are usu­ally a vari­ety of skill lev­els, with expe­ri­ence in dif­fer­ent aspects of the process.  Every­one brings some­thing to the table that can ben­e­fit their fel­low cri­tique partners.
Admit­tedly, not all cri­tique ses­sions are as ben­e­fi­cial as oth­ers for a vari­ety of rea­sons. It could be that the per­son giv­ing your cri­tique is less expe­ri­enced. Or, she might not be keen on your genre. Or, they may just have a dif­fer­ent approach to sto­ry­telling. What­ever the rea­son for a less than ideal cri­tique ses­sion, it helps to have the atti­tude of tak­ing the bad with the good.
In my opin­ion, the ben­e­fits out­weigh an occa­sional neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence. And some­times your story just sucks. It’s good to find that out early on, before wast­ing more time try­ing to bring to life a dead horse.  Yes, I have many dead sto­ries, along with those dreaded rejec­tion let­ters, fill­ing up my writ­ing files, too.
Even if some­one less expe­ri­enced per­forms your cri­tique, we are all read­ers. It doesn’t hurt to get an opin­ion from some­one who reads the kind of sto­ries you write. After all, that’s why we do this, I think. We want our read­ers com­ing back for more.
Please share your opin­ions on cri­tiquing. Do you find it help­ful? What kind of set­ting works for you? Do you have any advice to offer your fel­low writers?
Thank you again for stop­ping by.
Best Wishes and happy cri­tiquing! Joyce
Posted in Writing ~ Tools of the Trade | 34 Comments