A Writer's Inner Battle

We all know that writers are constantly wrestling with their inner critic. And we also know that this battle is a difficult and often painful one. Many of us have been down the rabbit hole of self-doubt, blaming ourselves for being “not good enough” at our craft and succumbing to the feeling that no one will read what we write or care in any way about it. But there are ways to combat these feelings, ways that lead to stronger drafts and bolstered confidence in your abilities as a writer.

I started writing on my blog nearly three years ago, and as I've written more articles and started to gain a regular readership, I've been confronted by one recurring theme: That I'm not a particularly good writer.

The first time this issue came up, in response to this article about the importance of writing without worrying about the quality, I took it as a sign that my voice was off or that I had failed to express myself properly. After all, the feedback was coming from me! But over time I realized that what people were really saying is that they don't feel like they can read my work with any degree of confidence. This is a huge distinction and the hard part about it is that you can't always tell if your inner critic is being honest or just making excuses. But it does become easier to ignore or suppress over time, as I learned by reading the aforementioned article.

I've also started to notice this in my own writing, and over time it's become harder to accept that I'm not among my peers as a writer, particularly because good writing doesn't come easy to me. In fact, even though I don't like using the word “talent” when pertaining to myself as a hobbyist writer of a blog, there's an undeniable talent behind what I write. The problem for me is that this reminds me of all my dreams of being a professional writer and, thus, having to prove myself. After all, I've spent so much time in the writing trenches and have still yet to sell anything.

This inner battle between self-doubt and finding value in one's skills has definitely affected how I've edited articles I've written. For example, on an earlier blog post about not overthinking an article's structure, a few readers asked if there was more they could do to polish their writing; when they were making such poor use of the space allotted to them. Then, I wrote another blog post about how to write a good blog article, and I got this response.

Caleb, you're a great writer but this post seems like it was written by someone who's just not very good at it yet. You should be able to get down to 3-4 paragraphs here and still have enough information.

I'll admit that the first time I read those comments, I wanted to rewrite the article in their honor and show them what proper article structure looks like. But I didn't do that, instead taking it as another sign of my own limitations. I was struggling, I thought, and perhaps this wasn't a way to get better.

But I went through the same thing in my actual writing. For example, when I write an article about how to think about writing your next article, I start out with this disclaimer:

I'm not saying that these are the only things that can be done when writing articles for your blog or expressing yourself on the internet—but experiment with them and see what works best for you. And even then, it can still change from day to day.

What I'm trying to say is that, even though I have a fairly long history of writing and editing articles, every time I have an idea for a new article it feels as if someone else has written it for me. When I read through my drafts, it's almost impossible to see that there's any part of this process that's my own. Rather, it all seems like one of those exercises I did at the beginning of the semester where you practice writing sentences and paragraphs; only instead of having fun with grammar and syntax, you're trying to learn to use the language correctly and write an entertaining article.

But even then, to be honest, I wasn't overthinking the length. I just didn't think my ideas were worth saying in the first place. So why would anyone want to read so much about them?

But then I became more aware of my inner critic and started to see this dilemma in a new light. First off, how many articles have you read where the author makes a similar disclaimer? Actually, with more knowledge as a reader comes a greater awareness of language and style and structure. So maybe there's something that's rubbed off on me from all those articles I've read; perhaps part of me is consciously trying to learn from the mistakes made by others or the successes in the areas that I feel lacking in. I'm not sure.

What I do know is that I take a lot of pride in my own writing; I love what I write, so why are people saying it's not good enough? And even if they're right, that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing it better or any more effectively than me. They may have a different goal in mind when writing, like sharing an idea or starting a discussion. But the fact of the matter is that the structure and language of my articles don't always feel like there's enough material for them.

When I think back on all of my early posts, they felt less like writing or an expression of myself than a lesson. I mean that in the best way possible: Writing is a skill. There's plenty of non-writers out there who are better writers than I am because they've put more time into reading and writing articles. So the skills and abilities that I've built up through practice can be used for any type of article, whether it's something as simple as a blog post about self-promotion on social media or something longer like an article about writing for personal growth. The only difference really is that I would hope to do better in those areas, because there's not much else at stake.

So, maybe that's what it boils down to: I want to publish well-structured, thoughtful articles; but I don't want them to come across as self-aggrandizing or pretentious. It's hard to get that balance of having a high standard for one's work while not letting the inner critic stand in the way of writing good content. So whenever I can't decide on whether or not something is good enough to share, I ask myself “Would my readers rather see this or nothing at all?” This is when I use my best judgment and write out the article in full before putting it up on my website.

Conclusion

I don't know that I'll ever truly master the art of self-doubt and the value of my writing, but I do find it a bit more bearable now. Maybe that's good enough for now.

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To see what else I've been writing about, please click here. For our archive of older articles, click here. To see older posts from when I was a Psychology major (before we had blogs), click here and here.