Confidence and Humble-Pie

I don't know about you, but when I started writing, I soared over the atmosphere in happiness. Perfect fit, writing and me. So I wrote my first book, my second, my third, and I submitted them as I finished. It felt good, natural, lovely. And anything that felt so good and natural and lovely meant instant success, right?

Now by success, I'm not talking about huge advances and press releases, I'm talking about getting "the call."

While I wrote those first books, I had no access to any critique group, and I was still a new-ish member of my local RWA. All that earlier confidence slipped a notch or two as I listened to the members share their stories. I dreamed of instant publication, but these were talented people, and most of them had experienced skads of rejection. I thought, why would I be different?

I hadn't been rejected yet, nor had I received contest results or gotten feedback on my books from fellow writers. A nagging voice urged me to have other writers read my work, so I did. Contest results arrived along with the form rejection. And my confidence plummetted. But I learned something very valuable.

Blind confidence is necessary to succeed in this business.

Did I read that wrong? She must have made a typo.

Blind confidence is necessary. If anyone starts out on their writing journey without a massive dose of confidence, they won't be able to handle the upcoming, bone-crushing blows to their ego. Now mind you, there are plenty of talented writers who get published on their first try out. I'd never pretend everyone is doomed to write for years before getting the call. However, the vast majority of us will experience plenty of rejection before we get published, and in order to survive, we need confidence.

But we also need humble-pie. It wouldn't make sense to get feedback from contests, critique partners, and editors, and then toss the advice aside. Sure, we need to evaluate the comments and decide if they're right for us, but to cling to a false confidence will only hold us back.


Photo by timparkinson

We need to be objective about our own work. We need to accurately assess our strengths and our weaknesses, and the best way to do it is to throw off our preconceived notions about our writing and listen carefully to anyone generous enough to point out our problems.

At first, it's not easy. It's hard to read criticism from contest judges. It's painful to read suggestions from critique partners, and it's devastating to get rejections in the mail. But then, we take the advice and apply it to our current or next novel. We study and avoid making the same mistakes. And we repeat the process. Sometimes over and over. And it gets so much easier.

If your path resembles mine, be thankful. We're learning to accept criticism. We're learning to be objective about our work and to take advice. Editors will be giving us plenty of suggestions when we do get the call, and we'll be able to handle it. When our books are published and we open a review, we might have hurt feelings if it's negative, but we'll remind ourselves how far we've come and look ahead to how far we have yet to go.

And we'll smile.

Next week I'll be sharing tips on keeping your confidence high while attending a conference, but this week's posts are general encouragement. Thanks for waiting!

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