You Won't Love Your Writing Until You Validate Yourself

If you follow me on Instagram, then you'll know I recently finished writing a short story titled, The Lonely Crow. I started working on The Lonely Crow last fall and have worked on it on and off since. This story took a lot of work, but five drafts and two beta reading rounds later, I have a piece of work I'm very proud of.

This post isn't me boasting about my writing, (but if you want a detailed blog on this writing journey, then comment that below). In this post, I'm going to discuss a very important lesson I learned while writing this story, and it's something I think so many writers and artists still need to learn—self-validation.

From my experience, most writers fall into one of two categories—they are either insecure or they are arrogant and think they know everything. The reason some authors might degrade their work is because they want to appear humble. They want to avoid being cocky.

I understand this is not the only cause of being insecure. It is completely normal to feel insecure as a writer. When you are a writer, you are openly putting your thoughts into the world. You are sharing some of your rawest emotions. You want people to like your work because if they don't, it feels like they are attacking you as a person.

Everyone on the face of the planet is insecure from time to time, and if someone tells you they don't have an insecurity, they are lying. As artists, we want to show pride in our work. We should want to be proud of what we have accomplished, but we should also be humble and always be looking to improve. This is what we should all be striving for—this equilibrium, but this can be a hard target to hit.

Self-doubt and criticism are two things that often come at us strong as writers, and they are often intertwined—we have doubts about our work because of past criticisms, and we criticize ourselves because we are insecure and don't let ourselves make mistakes. What we don't often realize is that it's healthy to make mistakes because that's how we experience creative freedom. We have to allow ourselves the opportunity to completely suck at what we're doing. We will only accomplish this when we begin to trust our own skills.

When I write the first draft of a project, I work straight through until the end. I don't look back at what I wrote, unless I'm reminding myself of where I left off, until the entire first draft is complete. I know not every writers' process is like this, but the point is—I give myself the opportunity to write absolute garbage because I have faith that when I edit the story, I will be able to make it better and more clear.

I still struggle with self-doubt and criticism. There are plenty of days when I want to slam my laptop shut and never read my story again. Sometimes that little voice telling me that I'll figure it out, isn't loud enough. But most days it is. When I used to get feedback from beta readers, I'd expected a lot of praise and little criticism, which was very naive and arrogant of me. Now, I not only realize how important honest feedback and criticism are, but I understand that the people I choose to beta read my books aren't saying critical things to be mean—they're saying them because they want to see me get better, and they want to see my book succeed.

As an artist, not only do you have to be aware of other people—you have to study the response you're getting from your audience, see what they like, and learn from mentors and peers. As a writer, you might study other people in order to help you build realistic characters. As a painter, you might study a muse—but you also have to be self aware. You have to know how far you can push yourself. You have to recognize when your creative battery is running low and do whatever it takes to let yourself be still and relax, even if that means not writing for a month.

You have to reflect and ask yourself what you really want to get out of your work. What are your goals? If you feel like writing is a chore, then why are you doing it? Why do you want to write? If you have trouble answering these questions, that's normal. Your answer may be very complex or very simple, but it all comes down to loving your work when you're finished. You don't have to love the physical act of writing, not many do, but the work you've created when you finish.

Your work may not be good, but you can get there. You have to be open to learning and growing, but you also have to take pride in your work. Even if you hate your entire story other than one sentence, you should pat yourself on the back for that sentence because that is the starting point.

You can only control one opinion, and that's your own. You have to validate yourself—validate yourself more than anyone else. I don't mean be cocky. If someone gives you feedback on your writing, consider their feedback, have other people read your work to see if this piece of feedback is common among your readers. If it is, edit your story. If it seems to be only one opinion, let it go.

In the early months, or even years, of your writing career, you might not have much encouragement or support. People might be doubting your skills or your ability to preserver, so it's extremely important that you validate yourself. Start by congratulating yourself on small things like physically sitting down to write (many writers don't even get that far). I know it might sound silly or completely stupid, but you have to work on building your inner voice.

I talked about this on my Instagram, but when I write, specifically when I edit, I find that my inner editor and my inner writer are often bickering. The editor side of my brain tells me to delete something while the writing side tells me to do everything I can to keep that scene or paragraph. All writers have these voices, but I think writers who have truly worked to improve their self-image, their confidence, and their humility, have a third voice that brings the other two together.

I like to call this voice the "okay" voice because when you're in the midst of writing and your inner critic is picking out everything that's wrong with your work, this is the voice that says you'll figure it out. When you're saying, "I'm never going to be good enough. I'll never get published," this is the voice that keeps you from giving up.

You'll know this voice is present, though you might often miss it, when you're reading through your work, and instead of yelling at yourself for all of the bad things, you'll mark up your page with edits, sigh, and say "I know there's a lot of work to be done, but I've got this. I'll figure it out."

Thank you for reading this post! I hope it encouraged you and that you try some of these things. Growing your confidence as a writer is a long process, but as you see results, you'll want to keep going. If you liked this post, I would love for you to check out my other blog post on self-love here.

It's been a pleasure writing for you and until next time—stay weird and stay writing. - Lexi