Got A Writing Neurosis? Let's Transform It And Stop The Sabotage
We all get hung up on something!
What’s your writing hang-up?
Do you put yourself down as a writer because you can’t spell? Or you’ve never finished a manuscript?
Do you feel you’ll never master the art of writing great dialogue? Or you’re crap at describing things?
While we all have space for improvement in our writing, just because we’re hung up on our deficiencies doesn’t mean that they should devalue us.
My neurosis is around the pace of my writing. Even before my health became a challenge, I was always frustrated for being such a slow writer.
In a recent session with a mindset coach, she suggested that I’m frustrated by what being a “slow writer” means to me. The frustration comes from my thoughts.
She posed these questions to me:
1. What am I making it mean that I’m a slow writer?
2. Is that serving me? (It’s not making me a faster writer to beat myself up for being slow!)
Having thought about those two questions and unpacked what they mean to me, the third question was:
3. Is your current thinking even true?
A few days later, I sat down with a cappuccino and my journal and thought about those questions.
In answer to the first one, what am I making it mean that I’m a slow writer, I wrote:
I’m:
Unproductive
A slacker
Not as hard working as an author who I admire
Shameful
Will never make money
Don’t or can’t have a publishing business
Not as good as quicker writers
Not committed
Not good enough
Not serious enough
When I asked myself if these thoughts were serving me, it was a big fat NO.
Then I asked myself the third question – are these things even true?
I went down them one by one and asked myself if there were true or false. All of them were false apart from the one where I am not as hard working as the author to which I was comparing myself. That one was true as I know that she works more hours per day and per week on her writing that I do.
Even at my slower pace, I am productive, I’ve always been fairly consistent in my writing, I am committed, I am good enough (and I have comments, engagement and reviews to back this up), I am serious about my writing and although I don’t currently make much money from my writing, I do make some.
I ask these questions to you
Think about your writing hang-up, the one that frustrates you and allows your inner gremlin to tell you that you’ll never be any good and it’s hardly worth bothering.
Then think about these questions:
1. What are you making your hang-up mean?
2. Are those thoughts serving you?
3. Are they even true?
It is worth spending time journaling on these questions so that you too can free yourself from the tyranny of your own self-criticism.
Feel free to post any thoughts in the comments.
Plodding gently
Cali xx
P.S. The mindset coach that I mention is Sue Campbell from the Pages and Platform team. They have some brilliant courses, masterclasses as well as the Happy Ever Author club.
P.P.S. If you liked this post, please share it. It might be just the thing which another writer needs to read, now.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
One of my angles, not that you've seen in my Substack yet, is mental health and thus reflection, especially self-reflection and I think these are great questions. I have dabbled in some fiction writing in the past but ultimately I was not happy with it. Stories moved to slow or there was no coherence or no plot being developed or I developed a story too quickly and thus it didn't have the impact I desired. In recent times, with the help of GPT, I have written some fables or allegories if you prefer about my macroeconomic school of thought to try and communicate it through another method rather than direct education or Substack newsletters, blogs, posts or whatever you want to call them.
The first one is pretty direct but still allegorical, I consider them a short anthology and much later in the year, they will be published on my Substack. I'm still debating whether to go through Substack itself and have it all archived, which I imagine will make them easily accessible, or create some pages and maybe initially try and generate some income via Substack (I'm doing poorly) and provide it to paying subscribers. Even though, I know that's unlikely to generate income at this stage, I only have 2 paying subscribers and that's only because I decided to add pay from the outset as a whim.
Anyhow, great reflection questions for any of us that write in any format or are interested in our general health, especially mental health. See, there is a reason I still follow you. Thank you!
What great questions. Not only about writing but about life events and circumstances. Especially "What are you making your hang-up mean? In terms of serving me well - could it be that it does for the wrong reason - like an excuse for not doing something?