Confidence in Writing

Very few writers have complete confidence in their own writing. Even well published authors struggle with their confidence and that usually has a signifcant negative impact on their ability to write consistently. Having confidence means having belief in and trust for one’s own abilty, in this case, to write. Writing is the art and craft of clearly communicating in ways that express what it is one wants to convey. Having some confidence in your ability to do that is necessary for the writer to write.

I believe that a writer’s confidence has a source that runs deeply within those who write. The writer needs to have some belief in what he or she is writing about. It is often said, to those who seek to write, “write what you know about”. If we don’t have confidence in what we know we know and if we don’t feel good about ourselves, we will probably not have a lot of self-confidence as writers.

In other words, writers who have low self-esteem have a tremendously difficult time to write consistently.  But why is this the case?

One reason why this may be the case is because writers don’t believe what they write will be worthy of being noticed by others. In other words, writers want their writing to matter to others. Writers write to connect with their audience on a given topic. Very few writers even get to actually writing, or want to continue writing if they make an attempt if they lack confidence in their own message.

There is the inner joy and contentment of writing experienced on some level in various ways by those who write. I am lucky to experience that joy every time I sit down to write. It is a wonderful time of day for me. It is a way for me to be alive in the most precious way that I know. So for me there is an intrinsic worth to writing. What I mean is that I believe that writing is good in and of itself despite its end product or lack thereof. For many writers, writing is as natural a thing to do as breathing is.

However, for some writers, writing can become an ordeal. Some writers feel very uncertain about their writing and whether or not their writing will make an important difference in their lives or to an audience of readers. They rely on the extrinsic value of writing, and this type of writing makes one feel much more vulnerable and uncertain about their writing. Writing is extrinsically valuable if writers receive external rewards for their writing.

Therefore, writers who believe that writing merely has an extrinsic value has less confidence in their writing than writers who believe that writing has both an intrinsic and extrinsic value.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There are no hard and fast rules that this distinction will shed light for all writers. However, it is something that I have observed for a while.
  
I would like to know what you all think about this distinction?  I used my philosophical background to evaluate writer confidence because I think that the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction can really shed some important light as to why writers may lack confidence in their writing, and how that lack of confidence may affect their ability to actually write or not.

© Irene Roth, October 22, 2009

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