A Writer’s Angst….

  It is normal for writers to be uncertain of themselves, and especially of their abilities.
This is especially the case with unpublished authors. Family, friends and even the
writer’s themselves feel that they are failures if they don’t quite live up to some kind of
success in the publishing world.

  Yet getting published takes a very long time for most writers. Even the most prolific of
writers find it difficult to find just the right publisher and just the right market. It takes
time to figure out how the writer’s business works. And for some writers who are
beginning, they don’t really know that writing is a business and the must fill a niche for
themselves.  But all of this is another topic for another day.

  According to Heather Sellars, most writers, especially beginning writers, will doubt
that they are as good as other people in the writing world. She believes that comparing
yourself to others doesn’t help the creative juices to flow. Instead, it stifles the creative
juices and dries them up because we can never write like anyone else. Each of us has a
unique style of writing that will make us a writer.

  According to Sellars, we must simply strive to do our best work, and to focus solely on
our own self while we write. We must focus on our own ideas, develop our own style,
and above all just write for the sheer pleasure of it all. We must enjoy the journey of
writing, regardless of what we are writing.

  Most writers intend to write. We all have intentions which become plans of what we
will write today, this week, this month and for some very well focussed writers, what
they will write this year. But how do we put these intentions into actions?  By persisting
and writing. 

  Simply put, we must just write regardless of how we feel. And we shouldn’t let others
influence how we feel about our writing. Also, we should stop comparing ourselves to
other writers because no two writers can be compared. Comparing is probably the most
frustrating thing that a writer can do for him/herself because we are all different. We
develop our craft differently, we have different ideas, different things are interesting to
us, and we will never measure up to another writer’s idea of what is good writing.

  So go forth and write my friends. That is the only way to succeed in this writing world.
And that is the only way to avoid writer’s angst.

Sunny