Writer’s Corner: How To Stop Being Your Biggest Critic

Everyone knows that when you become a writer, it can sometimes feel impossible letting anything you write see the light of day. Nothing is ever good enough, there is always something that you could do to improve the things you write (even if you are occasionally unsure of what that something is), and everyone else must also have your ridiculously high standards, so why bother putting any of it out there? Save yourself the rejection and criticism and just put it all away in a locked drawer.

The thing is, we as writers already know that our standards are far too high. We’ve all experienced the same conversations where your friend tries to tell you that they really like your writing and you should publish it somewhere, and you make some excuse of hating it and wanting to refine it or nobody would ever want to read it. If you read the blog last week, you will notice that the fear of commitment plays a huge role in how we hold ourselves back when it comes to releasing our writing. We are committing ourselves to having our writing out there by publishing it somewhere, and a lot of the principles outlined in that article are a good starting point for getting yourself out of the publishing jitters.

Let’s start with the writing itself. There are some of us whose opinion is so skewed towards the idea that the writing we produce is substandard that we don’t even write at all, because what’s the point. Well, for starters, you can’t call yourself a writer if you don’t write! Starting a journal is a great way to write while keeping your writing close. All you have to do is write for yourself, and surely you can trust yourself with your own writing!

The next step would be to get it online, even if you don’t make it available to the world quite yet. Writing it into a word processor makes it easy to copy and paste when you’re ready, and having it on a private web page makes you one step away from hitting publish. Even having it on a publicly viewable page likely won’t reach many eyes without proper site promotion or search engine optimization. Given enough time, you will get used to putting your work out there for someone to potentially stumble upon, and you will gain the courage to put your work in a more widely viewed space. This is one of the things that I have decided to do for myself when I took on the FOCUS Inspired blog.

Finally, it’s very important to have a confidant that you can trust with your writing. Although having someone to help you edit is great, even having a regular reader to give you honest general feedback is a very positive thing for any writer. A regular reader who enjoys your writing can be a big boost to your confidence and writing drive, encouraging you to write more and more as time goes on.

Remember, you are a writer for a reason, because you enjoy it! And chances are, if you enjoy your writing, there will be plenty more who will share that sentiment!