Are there any writers out there who experience self-doubt?
I’m riddled with it, especially when I go through periods where ideas, enthusiasm, stick-to-it-iveness, focus or money are in short supply.
(Spoiler alert. One or more of these items will be in short supply at any given time.) Knowing this, I’m reminded of a quote by Dorris Lessing: “Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
That quote comes from a place of hard-won logic and wisdom. Self-doubt, however, is more skulking and elusive. It’s like part of you is crouching behind a rock, throwing stones at yourself.
For me, such volleys take the form of conversations with myself. I’m a drama queen, so we’re talking monologues, soliloquies, dialogues and even claws-out arguments. These discussions are real nail-biters.
I wonder all kinds of unpleasant things. What if I’m not really a writer? What if I’m just a poseur whose ego depends on me being some kind of literary genius. Maybe I read somewhere that it’s cool to be a writer. I WAS a huge fan of “One the Road” in my youth.
But in the end, I speculate, I’m like poor, doomed Zelda Fitzgerald, aiming a decade late and a buck short to be a ballerina. You know, shooting for the stars but ultimately lacking the skill and stamina.
(Come to think of it, maybe I’m being too hard on Zelda. I never saw her dance. Maybe she was dazzling, scintillating. So good, you couldn’t look away. So good she couldn’t fit into any chorus. And everyone knows that’s how you break into the biz.)
Still, in the end her dreams turned to dust. Following this train-wreck of thought, I consider it entirely possible that my efforts have been wasteful, counter-productive and sad. I’m clearly pouring endless time and emotion into a pursuit to which I’m entirely unsuited.
I know, it’s brutal. I’m nice, I promise, just not to myself. I hope someday to declare my mind a bully-free zone.
I can’t even become comfortable in my despair. After a few minutes of moping, my better half–i.e. the more positive side of my mind–starts asking valid questions. It says, wait a minute. If you’re not a writer, why are you always writing? It’s been said that a writer is not a noun but a verb, or something to that effect.
That part comes along when I write something I like. This is original, I say. This is in my voice. I’ve made something that wasn’t there before. It’s like that old Air Supply song, “Making Love Out of Nothing at All.”
At the moment of achieving a verbal slam dunk, I get a jolt of something. It’s a sweet brew of excitement, confidence and happy hormones like serotonin and dopamine, That’s when a third character in my skull surfaces. You know the one. The eternal ingenue, the ambitious girl who thinks she’s smart, her words matter and she’s bound for success. Gentlemen, I’m sure you have an equivalent inner lad who knows he’s destined for greatness.
And then, the bitter old crone within says, out the side of her mouth, the one that isn’t clenching a cigarette, “Yeah, your words sound pretty. Maybe someday they’ll pay some bills.”
I’ll end this metaphor of an inner dialogue between warring alters because I’m starting to sound like “Sybil.”
I’m curious, though. Do you have inner battles or at least the occasional snit over writing? Do you suspect yourself of just pretending to be a writer? How do YOU get weird about your chosen avocation?
I think negative thoughts and beliefs get buried deep within. They don’t want to be ignored. No one and nothing does. They like to pipe up every once in a while. And sometimes they all chime in at once, like a Greek chorus. It makes writing feel like an against-all-odds endeavor.
It can’t be just me because, neurotic as I am, I’m not that original.
So again, is there anyone else out there, any creative, who fights a battle of wits with their own wits?
Let me know. Are you there, reader? It’s me, Sarah.
–Sarah Torribio
Leave a Reply