Writing Past Doubt

"...Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. "

-Sylvia Plath

How does one banish self-doubt in a sea of rejection, ridicule, and criticism? One thing is for certain: you can't trust to your self-esteem to others, depending on their pronouncements to keep your head above the water (or drag you under by your ankles.) Somehow, you have to find your buoyancy yourself.

You do it by immersing yourself in the written word, reading, reading, and reading until you to absorb the alchemy of storytelling, the magic of well-crafted prose in your pores. The reading is a continual process, not something you quit once you start writing or when your first book is published.

Equally important is the ongoing act of writing -- every day, or as close as you can come. Only with repeated, concentrated practice will you break through to those moments when you finally hear your own words singing the way the best of what you're reading does. In those sweet, still moments, you'll begin to recognize that yes, you really are a writer, that you have something to say that's worth the listening, that's deserving of the struggle to share your words with others.

Those moments and that knowledge have the power to keep your will afloat through the days that threaten to submerge you. Those moments make the battle worthy, whether or not it's ever won.