Writing Confidence (I Don’t Have Any Lately)

There was a time in my writing life when I thought I was pretty hot shit.

Okay, maybe that’s something of an exaggeration. I’ve never quite been so keen on myself. But there was definitely a good stretch where I felt solidly competent in my writing work.

I miss those days.

I think that stretch I spent in which writing was hard did more damage than I’d like to admit. When I was writing easy and often, I felt good about what I was putting onto paper. I felt like it was worth reading, even if not too many people wanted to read it.

When I hit that skid, though, I tripped harder than I thought. I’ve recovered when it comes to ideas and the writing being easier, but I think I lost some confidence along the way. I have no real faith in anything I’ve been writing lately. It’s not that I don’t like it or that I don’t enjoy the process, but once that draft is done, I’m at a loss. As much as I enjoy what I wrote, I don’t think it’s good enough for anyone else to enjoy.

Rejection is a natural part of writing, and there was a time when I was getting rejected regularly because I was submitting regularly. When I hit that dry period, the submitting also hit drought mode. When it came time to get back in the game, I found that I really had no game left. Not for lack of trying, either. I subscribed to my writing magazines again, started trolling for places to submit, even submitted a few things, but for the most part, I’ve felt out of my element. I lost my mojo, and I lost my place.

It’s a little bit demoralizing to be honest.

I’ve been working on the novel length version of Stateline for months now, unable to make a whole lot of progress quickly due to the current stress test that is my life. As I’ve progressed through the story, I realize that it’s not exactly what I envisioned, but then again, I’m not entirely surprised by that because I didn’t exactly do the greatest outlining/planning. I jotted down my main beats, but there were a lot of words that needed to fill in the blank spaces between those beats. This isn’t unfamiliar territory for me. I’ve done this before. And there have been moments where I’ve really enjoyed the story I’ve been writing. A line here, a turn of phrase there, a conversation, an interaction. I’m having a good time writing this story even if it is meandering and destined to be in need of much revising.

But too much of it strikes me as a regression of my craft. There are times when I’m writing it that I wonder why I’m writing it because I’ve clearly lost some of my skill. I used to think that writing poetry would help to keep my prose sharp, but it seems like this blade is forever dull.

I keep thinking that I’ll get my confidence back as I go along. After all, I’m going to keep writing. That’s not going to stop.

I guess I don’t know what this means right now.

Look at that. I don’t even have confidence in this blog post.