Negative Self-Talk and Writing

In order to develop a healthy and enjoyable writing life, we must all learn to curb our habit of negative self-talk before, during and after our writing sessions. Negative self-talk is all of those negative things that we tell ourselves over and over. Negative self-talk can create a lack of confidence and lead to procrastination, or even writer’s block.

Here a few examples of negative self-talk:

• I will never finish this manuscript.
• That sounds terrible.
• I absolutely have no language fluency how could I be a writer!
• I will never become a good writer.
• Maybe I just don’t really have anything to say that’s interesting?
• I will never write like my friend.
• I will never get published.
• I can’t even sit and write consistently.
• Why try and persevere? There’s no point!

Sound familiar? We have all had times as writers when our negative self-talk has taken over and has infected all of our writing sessions and our efforts to write really suffer. We must learn to tame that voice – that critical voice inside of us.

As writers, we must learn to write in the moment and to get completely lost in our writing. When we do our self-confidence as writers will grow and our writing skills will also improve. We will get more writing done too.

There is nothing more pleasant for me than to get completely lost in my writing. Those sessions are the most meaningful for me. And I need them like I need my vitamins. I compare flow writing and vitamins because I think that both are necessary in order to be healthy and happy.

In other words, in order to be a happy and healthy writer, you must concentrate on your writing. Nothing is more important than that to develop your skill as a writer. In order to be a healthy person, you must also take your vitamins. Over time, vitamins will help you to ward off illness and will make you stronger as a person. So, there is a symmetry between the two for me.

I encourage all writers to try to write without engaging in negative self-talk. Try to bracket some time, say ten or fifteen minutes, that you write without any negative self-talk. In the beginning, it may well be difficult to achieve this, but keep trying. Once you achieve this, you will be so happy that you did. There is no better reward than to write in that state of positive acceptance that is so freeing it can actually feel like a mild euphoria. Some of my best writing was done when I was in that state. I hope you will try this. I look forward to hearing how you do.

© Irene S. Roth

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.