Tag: negative self-talk

The Seesaw

There’s nothing that motivates me as much as charging toward a Big Audacious Goal — except if that BAG is a publishing goal, and then I’m even more motivated. I’ve been spending three and a half hours a day for the last 3 days editing Apocalypse. I’m halfway through the book and all the way through my Camp NaNoWriMo goal. Just in time for the Fourth of July.

Photo by DS stories on Pexels.com

There’s nothing that threatens to tear me down as much as charging toward a Big Audacious Goal. A constant barrage of negative self-talk pummels me with all the reasons I should stop:

  • Your writing isn’t that good.
  • Nobody wants to read your writing.
  • Nobody cares about your writing.
  • Your work is too shallow.
  • It’s romantic fantasy — are you kidding?

It’s a quandry. Everything to do with publishing brings me out of whatever doldrums I’m in. It’s the payoff from writing and editing and re-editing and re-editing. But those questions. Is it worth making myself vulnerable to negative self-talk which may, in fact, be true?

I think it’s time to meditate. Or take a nap. Or something.

On Second-Guessing My Ability

This picture has nothing to do with today’s topic.



I second-guess my writing talent all the time. I live with a constant critic who has no trouble getting into my head (as it is already in my head) to tell me that my writing isn’t enough — not interesting enough, not good enough, not publishable enough. The voice insists that I am writing the same stuff I wrote back in sixth grade.

Despite this, I’m not adverse to critiques. In fact, I relish getting better. But I’m still afraid I’m not good enough.

I hear this is not uncommon to writers, that most writers feel a constant sense of doubt, and that we wouldn’t want to meet one who doesn’t. But I need to shake this sense of self-censure (and self-censorship) for my long-overdue re-editing of Gaia’s Hands. I have to believe in the book to make it better.  

So, how to believe? Cognitive journaling might help — counteract all the mind-reading (“the critics hate it”) and fortune-telling (“I’ll never get published”) and name-calling (“I’m so talentless!”) and awfulizing (“my stuff sucks”). 

I joke about a magic spell, because I feel like my writing career is cursed. Of all the things I pooh-pooh in my life, curses are not one of them. I half-way believe in curses, even as I suspect they’re an externalization of one’s failure scripts. I’m looking at how to break the curse.

I suspect, though, I will have to live with it and create despite it. And someday, when/if I get published, I will celebrate all the harder.