In my experience doubt is one of the greatest obstacles writers face. Doubt that you have the chops to finish your latest book. Doubt that you have the skills to even start. Doubt when you find yourself stuck, whether you are an outliner or a discovery writer, or a hybrid of both.
Doubt and I are old acquaintances—it wasn’t until I had been studying and practicing the craft of fiction writing that I began to overcome it, but, even then, doubt continued to get in my way.
My late friend and mentor Mary Rosenblum told me in no uncertain terms I needed to figure out a way to vanquish the inner “demon” of self-doubt or I would never progress as a writer. She told me one of the most talented writers she ever knew had been crippled by intense self-doubt after initially writing some promising work and had not written anything since. I took her advice to heart.
It took me several years after her urging to finally begin to get a handle on overcoming doubt, but I did.
I learned you never banish doubt completely, but rather, you figure out how to write and finish despite the doubt. Today’s Words of Wisdom looks at doubt and how to overcome it before and during writing, as well as when you are stuck not knowing what happens next, with excerpts from James Scott Bell, Joe Moore and PJ Parrish.
Another reason excellent writers experience doubt is, ironically, excellence itself. Because these authors keep setting their standards higher, book after book, and know more about what they do each time out. That has them wondering if they can make it over the bar they have set. Many famous writers, unable to deal with this pressure, have gone into the bar itself, and stayed late.
Jack Bickham, a novelist who was even better known for his books on the craft, put it this way:
“All of us are scared: of looking dumb, of running out of ideas, of never selling our copy, of not getting noticed. We fiction writers make a business of being scared, and not just of looking dumb. Some of these fears may never go away, and we may just have to learn to live with them.”
Yes, you learn to live with them, but how? The most important way is simply to pound away at the keyboard.
You write.
As Dennis Palumbo, author of Writing from the Inside Out, put it, “Every hour you spend writing is an hour not spent fretting about your writing.”
If a writer were to tell me he never has doubts, that he’s just cocksure he’s the Cheez-Wiz of literature, I know I will not want to read his work. That’s why I think doubts are a good sign.
They show that you care about your writing and that you’re not trying to skate along with an overinflated view of yourself.
The trick is not to let them keep you from producing the words.
Don’t ever let the waves of doubt stop you. Body surf them back to shore, let the energy of them flow through your fingertips. That’s the only real “secret” to this game.
James Scott Bell—July 10, 2011
So when you get stuck, what can you do? Here are some suggestions that I’ve used. Perhaps they’ll help you, too.
- Change your writing environment. I have a home office with a desktop PC. I also have a laptop. Sometimes I need different surroundings so I grab my laptop and move to another room or outside. Just the act of breathing fresh air can fire up your brain.
- Listen to music. Often I write to background music, usually a movie score (no distracting lyrics). But sometimes setting down in front of my stereo and rocking out to my favorite group can clear my head and refresh my thoughts.
- Get rid of distractions. TV, email, instant and text messages, phone calls, pets, and the biggest offender of them all: the Internet. Get rid of them during your writing time.
- Stop writing and start reading. Take a break from your writing and read one of your favorite authors. Or better yet, pick something totally out of your wheelhouse.
- Don’t decide to stop until you’re “inspired”. I’ve tried this. It won’t work.
- Open a blank document and write ANYTHING. It’s called “stream of consciousness”. It worked for James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust. It can work for you.
- Write through it. Beginners sit around and hope for a solution to come to them in their dreams. Professionals keep writing. The solution will come.
- Finally, do something drastic. Bury someone alive. Works every time.
Joe Moore—July 20, 2016
Maybe there are writers out there who never have any doubts. Maybe Nora Roberts or Joyce Carol Oates never break out in a cold sweat at night. But I suspect there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of you out there who are in the same sweaty boat as I am. Because getting published is the easy part. (I know, those of you who aren’t don’t want to hear that, but it’s true.) Staying published is what’s tough. That means consistently writing good books that people want to read. And did I mention trying to always become a better writer?
Here’s Chuck Wendig on the subject of self-doubt. He’s my favorite go-to-guy when I am feeling alone and fraudulent:
You’re sitting there, chugging along, doing your little penmonkey dance with the squiggly shapes and silly stories and then, before you know it, a shadow falls over your shoulder. You turn around.
But it’s too late. There’s doubt. A gaunt and sallow thing. It’s starved itself. It’s all howling mouths and empty eyes. The only sustenance it receives is from a novelty beer hat placed upon its fragile eggshell head — except, instead of holding beer, the hat holds the blood-milked hearts of other writers, writers who have fallen to self-doubt’s enervating wails, writers who fell torpid, sung to sleep by sickening lullabies.
Suddenly Old Mister Doubt is jabbering in your ear.
You’re not good enough.
You’ll never make it, you know.
Everyone’s disappointed in you.
Where are your pants? Normal people wear pants.
You really thought you could do it, didn’t you? Silly, silly penmonkey.
And you crumple like an empty Chinese food container beneath a crushing tank tread.
There’s no easy way to cope with this. But here are some things I have found that have helped me over the decades. If you have some remedies, pass them on. We can all use the help.
- Talk to other writers. Be it through a critique group or at a writer’s conference, or just hanging out at blogs like this — make human contact with those who understand. One of the hardest lessons I learned was that, although writing is a solitary pursuit, it’s not a good idea to go it alone.
- Get away from your WIP. Which is NOT to say you should abandon writing for days or weeks because it you do that you lose momentum and risk being exiled from that special universe you are creating in your head. But it is a good idea, when you a stuck or in deep doubt, to feed your creative engine. Go for a good hike (leave early and take the dog). Read a good book or better yet some poetry. Go see some live theater or a concert. You will come back refreshed. It’s like doing a crossword puzzle: You can sit there and stare at 19-across for days and not get it, but if you put the puzzle down for awhile then pick it up, you see the pattern and can move on.
- Stay in the moment. Don’t project your fears forward or your regrets backward: What if I spend the rest of the year working on this story and it turns out to be a heaping pile of poop? What if no editor ever buys it? What if I only sell four copies on Amazon? If only I had started doing this when I was younger or before I had kids (or fill in the blank) I might be successful by now. As a therapist friend of mine once told me: If you stand with one leg in the past and the other in the future, all you’ll do is piss on your present.
- Don’t be afraid to fail. Because you will, at some time and at some level. If you spend all your energy worrying about this, you will never be a writer. Failure can often lead you in new directions. Margaret Atwood took a vacation to work on her novel but six months later, she realized the story was a tangled mess with “badly realized characters” and she abandoned it. But soon after that, she began her dystopian masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale. As she put it:
Get back on the horse that threw you, as they used to say. They also used to say: you learn as much from failure as you learn from success.
PJ Parrish—March 14, 2017
***
- Is doubt an obstacle you face as a writer?
- Do you feel doubt when starting or finishing a project?
- If you get stuck while writing, is doubt part of your creative struggle to unstick your writing? What techniques do you use to overcome doubt and unblock your writing?
- How do you overcome overcome self-doubt in general regarding your writing?
Doubt/fear/obstacle/getting stuck – don’t miss what it’s trying to tell you.
Long ago, when I dumped Impostor Syndrome (I like the ‘or’ ending – sue me), I found the perfect solution for me.
I keep a FEAR JOURNAL (actually: JOURNAL – Resistance, FEAR, concerns – LIMBO, where LIMBO is the working title for the third and final volume of Pride’s Children).
When I realize what’s going on, again – not writing because of ‘something’ – I head over there and poke it with a writing stick until today’s excuse is skewered. Lately, it’s mostly things I’ve dealt with before, and, as soon as I figure out which legacy fear/worry is bothering me again, it’s over – Been there, done that – and I already have the solution, but needed to figure out the questions again.
Occasionally (and this morning was one), it’s something NEW – and now that’s exciting, because I’ve been writing this trilogy since 2000, and it JUST OCCURRED TO ME to worry about something?
Today’s was the ethical implications of the end of volume two, NETHERWORLD, and what some of the characters did there.
Now I can’t wait to write the next two scenes (I’d finished the first scene from one character’s pov) from the other two main characters’ povs, and, after worrying for a while that I’d finally managed to shoot myself in the writing hand, I figured out that no – this is actually something I really need to examine NOW, and it’s going to be the source of some deep new stuff added to the magnificent train wreck I had already been planning.
The FEAR Journal has this effect: there’s a reason for the fear, and it’s a message from the subconscious, and it tells me there something MORE, and I’m missing it.
If I have to learn something new to get at that, fine. If I have to do more research, fine. If I have to walk very carefully, and ask my beta reader questions about whether she gets it (her record in the past is almost 100%, so I’m not too worried), fine. FEAR is the source, the trigger, the signal, the omen – there’s more, and I want it. And I feel the frisson of fear because I almost missed it.
Great comments, Alicia. I’ve been keeping a novel journal (something JSB and David Morrell, among others, suggest trying) for each book as I write it since 2016 and it’s made a huge difference. Fears and doubts go in there, and it’s a place where I can figure out why I’m stuck, too, along with brainstorming, re-outlining etc. Keeping a fear/worry-specific journal is an interest twist on the idea. Journaling can be such a powerful tool. Thanks for sharing yours here.
Hello, doubtness, my old friend…
Dale, another excellent collection of wise solutions to a universal problem. Thanks!
Jim describes my big fear–going downhill. The next book won’t be as good as the last. As he says, “…setting their standards higher, book after book…wondering if they can make it over the bar they have set.”
Thankfully I haven’t had to resort to Joe’s suggestion to bury someone alive…yet.
My solution to doubt is to have lots of different projects going at the same time. If the novel stalls, work on an article or blog post, or edit a client’s work, or prepare to teach a class. I turn away from utter crap to focus instead on something else that doesn’t sound as bad. In fact, it’s pretty good.
Alicia’s suggestion of a “fear journal” is brilliant.
Thanks, Debbie. I was thrilled to unearth these three gems in the archives. I certainly share your fear of going downhill. Leaning into story craft (which of course is another JSB nugget of wisdom) helps center me, push me to be better and overcome that doubt/fear.
I agree about Alicia’s fear journal idea. It’s something I’ll do more often when needed in the novel journals I keep for each book while I work on them.
Chaning the writing environment is great advice. It’s certainly worked for me. Getting away from the keyboard – and the tempter called the Internet that dwells within – is another good tactic for getting back into the writing groove.
I agree, Michael. I’m a sucker for the distractions the Internet can provide–having an offline writing computer can help, and getting outside for a walk can recharge things and bring a fresh energy to writing.
Thank you for this post, Dale, and including the experienced takes of JSB, Joe, and PJ. It’s exactly what I needed to read this morning.
I’m in the midst of expanding a 1,500 word Sci-fi piece that did well in a big contest last year. The three judges universally praised the piece and suggested areas for improvement. I’m struggling to scale-the story up for a major speculative fiction contest. Yesterday, in particular, was a dark night of the soul, as I can’t seem to fit the world building, plot, and character together in a believable way. And, of course, I’m doubting my ability to do so. I don’t know yet which of the specific suggestions offered by my TKZ mentors I’ll use to get through this. But I do know that quitting is not an option.
Glad to hear this post is what you’ve needed, Louis. Wonderful news about your SF story doing well in a big contest. Something I don’t do often enough is remind me of how far I’ve come as a writer, and that might help you. too. It’s not about resting on our laurels, it’s about recognizing that we’ve improved and can continue to improve. Definitely keep today’s WoW at hand and consult as needed while expanding your story. You can do this!
What a timely post for me where I am right now. I am writing #8 book that is under contract and I have felt so inadequate to finish it! It’s a steaming pile of poop. Your advice is spot on. Thanks
You’re welcome, Jane! It doesn’t seem to matter how much we’ve accomplished, doubt is always poking at us. I’m glad this has come at the right time for you.
Great post, Dale. I think you struck a nerve. And if people are honest, there will be a lot of confession today.
Wonderful advice from the archives. That is a rich treasure trove of advice.
To your questions: A lot of great answers already given.
1. Doubt is an obstacle for me in every facet of my life. I am cursed to be both manic and a perfectionist. That adds up to a lot of self-doubt.
2. I feel more doubt when finishing a project. I have all kinds of grandiose expectations and hopes as I start. When I finish, I wonder where all the grandeur went.
3. Techniques to overcome doubt and unblock writing: What helps me the most is to step away from the writing and do some strenuous exercise. Nothing like flushing the blood through the vessels and capillaries to get those neurons firing on all eight cylinders.
4. Overcoming doubt in general:
a. Looking around and realizing there is no correlation between confidence and competence. This helped me particularly in a previous occupation. You will see so many confident (fill in the blank for the occupation), but the most confident are not necessarily the best. We all struggle. We are all good enough.
b. Realizing I must do something wrong at least three times before I get it right.
c. It’s okay to have some doubt. Humility is beautiful. Overconfidence is…
d. Daily vigorous exercise. Good for the body, and it helps prevent depression. You’ll be surprised how many ideas will hit you while exercising. Do it.
e. Having other projects in your life, something at which you can excel, something which you can be proud of.
Wonderful post, Dale. Have a weekend full of confidence and success!!!
Thanks so much for these comments, Steve. You’ve shared some excellent techniques for overcoming doubt which we can all employ.
Excellent observation about there being no correlation between confidence and competence. We are blessed with superb presenters at the Rainforest Writers retreat, accomplished, award-winning authors like Nancy Kress, and they will talk about facing doubt in their writing. Like Jim said, doubts are a good sign, as long as you don’t let them keep you from writing.
I think it helps to keep focused on the writing itself and not on any expectations of how it will be received by others. Yes, while editing you want to look at your novel or story as though someone else had written it, but focusing on external outcomes tends to feed doubt in my experience.
Hope you also have a wonderful weekend!
“Every hour you spend writing is an hour not spent fretting about your writing.”
Love this line! It goes well with the famous line from Dori in Finding Nemo . . . “Just keep swimming.”
Doubt it a very real stumbling block that monster over my shoulder. But not that I know burying someone alive is an acceptable remedy . . . well, game changer!
Thanks for the encouraging words!
You’re very welcome, Lori. That Dennis Palumbo quote can be very motivating. Also, I find knowing that doubt is very common for writers, regardless of how much they’ve accomplished, helps.
I never have doubts, he says before nervously looking over his shoulder.
LOL, thanks for the chuckle Harald! Well put 🙂
A powerful topic that impacts many writers, including myself. A lot of great tips here. For me, the biggest impact doubt has is moving from unpublished to published. But as has been discussed here at TKZ many times, we learn and grow with each book and have to embrace it.
And of course doubt plagues during the writing of each book. Have I researched enough? Have I made that character 3D enough? Does that clue or plot point make sense? Etc.
And a new layer of doubt is added when you are planning a series vs. a stand-alone book. Even if you’re good at planning out the series in advance, there’s a possibility you could miss an important consideration in the development of your characters or the plot. It’s not easy to think through the flow of your characters and plots in a series. Then doubt sets in and you ask yourself “What if I publish book 1 and then realize I’ve missed a key element that impacts the series?” etc.
It all boils down to the advice mentioned in this post and elsewhere–sit your butt down and write. At times easy to say and hard to do, but it’s still the bottom line.
And ultimately, I think aging will help me overcome doubt. You find yourself getting older and older and it’s like “Uh…look chickie, you don’t have a ton of years left. Maybe you oughtta step on the gas.” LOL!
Great points about how doubt can layer, BK. Something to be aware of. Forewarned is forearmed can help in dealing with doubt as well. You’re so right that BICHOK (Butt-in-chair, Hands-on-Keyboard) is essential.
Not long after I signed my first contract for 3 books, I stared at my computer and said, “What have I done?”
How in the world could I write a book in nine months when it took me 5 years to write the one that got me the contract???
It’s amazing what a deadline will do for you. 🙂 And prayer. Each.page. Actually each word and sentence. At least once in each book I’ve written at some point when everything is a total mess, that internal editor says, “What made you think you could write this story?” But I keep working and sometimes brainstorming with a friend, and it all comes together…at least it does after my editor gets through with it.
Great post!
Amen!!!
Great comments, Patricia. There’s nothing like the prospect of a looming deadline to help us overcome our doubts (to paraphrase Samuel Johnson). Trusting in the process by continuing to work can also help overcome doubt.
Thanks for this post, Dale…sorely needed right now.
I heard or read somewhere recently that the story that won’t leave me alone can only be written by me. I do have one of those pestering me. But this one is not like what I’ve written before, and I’m afraid it’s a mountain I can’t climb.
But this post shouted to me that I’d better get my hiking boots on and pack some energy bars, ’cause it’s going to be an adventure I won’t want to miss.
🙂
Here’s to climbing that literary mountain, Deb! Tell doubt to take its own hike. Glad this post could help.
If Nora Roberts doesn’t have doubt, here’s why.
“I’m just starting [a new book] and the battle has already begun. I don’t think they ever go smoothly. It’s work. It should be work. It should be hard work. I think if you sort of sit around and wait to be inspired, you’re probably going to be sitting there a long time. My process is more about crafting, working an idea through my head to see if it’s a good concept.” Nora Roberts in an interview with the “Hagerstown Herald-Mail.”
Thanks for sharing this quote from Nora Roberts, Marilynn. She shows the way forward, knowing this will be a creative struggle, filled with effort.
Thanks for the shout out, Dale and others. My friend, NY Times bestselling thriller author J. T. Ellison puts it this way: “It’s the whole getting started thing for me. I forget how to write a book. The first ten thousand words are like digging fossils from rocks.”
I was very happy to find your post from 2011, Jim. Thanks for sharing Ellison’s quote, that’s a keeper.
Oh, yes. My old friend doubt. (I call him “Fear.”) He likes to hang around and bother me, especially when I’m starting a new project. I wonder if the last books were just lucky. Or maybe I don’t have anything else to say. Or …
But I like what JSB had to say about doubts being a good sign. And all the other advice in these words of wisdom are gems. Thanks for bringing them to us.
NOt being afraid to fail is a big one. I always think I’m not good enough or my ideas aren’t worthy or my work is horrid. But I don’t give up. If you can’t come up with ideas–just write. Write anything. Get into it and write what comes to mind.
I adore JSB’s wanderings where he starts with a words and ends up someplace else totally. I use that with asking “What doe my character want right now?” and by the time I’m done, I have a decent scene to work with.
Remember–you can’t edit a blank page–so put something there. You can always change it. And if you don’t work with the doubt, you will be a wannabe writer.
Thanks for weighing in, Barbara. You’re right, being afraid to fail is a big fear many writers have. Important observation about being able to “work with/through” the doubt by getting the words down first.