Tag: confidence

Struggling with self-esteem


Last night I sat on the edge of my bed and broke down in tears.  Up until then I’d been surfing the web, reading the blogs I follow, commenting where I felt I had something to say and applauding them for winning yet another blog award or getting their 1000 follower on Twitter or getting an agent or publisher for their novels.  Truly wonderful and fantastic achievements and I’m so very happy to be a part of it, knowing my writing buddies are moving forward and seeing the fruits of their labors.

So why should this make me cry?

While I was honestly thrilled for them, I was also saddened because it wasn’t me.  Oh, I know this confession sounds horrible and incredibly selfish, but it’s not.  It just hurts somehow, deep in the core of my being.  I’m not sure where it comes from.  Maybe it was because I was told all my life I’m not good enough at anything I did. I was actually told as a child that I had no personality, no one liked talking to me, no guy would ever want me, and the worst – I was completely unlovable, so much so even my own parents didn’t want me and gave me away.  That one hurt.  It still hurts, forty years later.  Even my own kids have told me at one time or another I’ve failed them as a mom.  Don’t tell me words don’t hurt.  They not only hurt, but the cuts they leave behind remain forever.

Over the course of my life, I’ve allowed others to instill their beliefs about me into me, and I believed them.  After all, if so many people said the same thing, then obviously they saw something I didn’t.  Sadly, it’s followed me into my adulthood and it’s a struggle every day to try to find ways to believe in myself, to believe I’m good at what I do.  When I see my fellow bloggers get another award or achieve some fantastic success, I’m not jealous; it’s just a knife in the chest that reiterates to me I’m not as good as them at something I love to do.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m very happy for them and I don’t want something because I didn’t deserve it or because someone feels sorry for me.  I want to get rewarded for hard work and perseverance.  Their success, though, and my lack of it reinforces  the negative thoughts:  ‘you have no personality’ and ‘no one wants to talk to you.’  I am so much more a champion for others to succeed than I am for myself because it’s been beat into me that I will never succeed at anything.  And yet, I keep holding on to that dream of being a great author someday.  That someone, somewhere, will pick up my novel and love it so much that they read it over and over and over again until the binding falls apart, the pages are worn…even dog-eared.  Somewhere in time, my novel(s) will be well loved.

So why do I let others’ success draw me down?  I think it’s because their success seems to come natural for them.  They just open their mouths and people listen and click ‘follow’.  I’ve never had that.  Never.  I don’t even know how to obtain that.  I’m the person who takes 2 steps forward and gets pushed 20 steps back and it’s a constant struggle to push ahead.   Yet, I keep trying.

Why do I care about whether I get a blog award or if people follow my blog?  All of us want to feel loved, needed and special.  For someone like me who feels completely and utterly alone in a room full of people, I have to fall back on my passions, my dreams, to keep me focused.  When I don’t get recognized or passed over for my hard work, I begin to doubt myself, again.  I hear those negative words, ‘you’re not good enough, even at the thing you love doing…writing.  I guess I need the ‘atta boys’.  I need people to say “I appreciate you.”  It’s sad.

So, if no one cares about what I say or what I think, then why write this blog?

I write it because I know I am not the only one out here in the blogosphere who suffers from low self-esteem, and if I talk about it and others read it, then maybe they won’t feel so alone.  Maybe I can impart some wisdom, and if I can help one person with this blog, I’ll have achieved a lot.

This morning when I got up, I shot over an e-mail to a friend, expressing my sadness and my doubts as to why I continue this blog or even write.  I then went for a walk to clear my head, gather my wits and give myself my everyday pep talk.  What do I say to myself?

  1. I tell myself I am a great writer.  Others just don’t know it yet because I have nothing yet to show them. But I will.  It’s coming, and it will be fantastic. (I have to tell myself this several times during the day so I don’t give up).
  2. I set new goals.  I get a clear picture in my mind of where I want to be 2 weeks from now, a month from now.  It helps to stay focused.
  3. I decide how I will celebrate meeting my goals.  It could be a movie, a new dress, maybe even chocolate.  Recognizing the achievement of my goals boosts my confidence.
  4. I try to learn from my mistakes and not look at them as colossal failures.  Very difficult for someone who’s been told ever since childhood they’re a failure (“Jen, that A- on your exam should have been an A+.  Why did you mess up?  Why didn’t you study?”)
  5. I will continue listening to others’ opinions, but I must hold true to who I am.  I will not let others take any more of my heart, my spirit or my soul just to make themselves look bigger and better.  There are those who want to see me succeed as much as I want to see them succeed.  Surround myself with these people.
  6. I will give more of my time and encouragement to others.  I already do this, but I must do more because it lends to gaining positive feedback and respect from others, all essential when building a better self-esteem.
  7. Stop comparing myself to others.  I’m me.  And I have a lot to offer.
  8. And last but not least…never, never, never give up on my dreams.  They are all that I have to keep me moving forward.  If I lose my dreams, I lose me.  I don’t want to lose me.

And…now that I’ve managed to make everyone depressed, I will start my corned beef and cabbage and dive back into my short story (which has a rapidly approaching deadline), and my novel, which will get a publishing contract this year, come hell or high water.

What about any of you?  Do you have self-esteem issues?  Do you find you have to give yourself pep talks every day?  I would love to hear about your personal triumphs.  Please share.

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Why I write


Why do I write?  And why young adult fantasy?  Don’t teens have enough to deal with?  Shouldn’t I focus more on offering teens solutions during these tough years rather than fill their heads with non-existent fluff?  Isn’t writing fantasy a bit egotistical?

Believe it or not, these are questions I’ve been asked over the past several years.  I respond this way:

  • I write because I love to write.  It’s as important to me as breathing.  If I go a day without writing, I get jittery.  My brain flips out.  It’s like I didn’t get my ‘fix’ and I’m in major withdrawal. It’s not pretty.
  • I like writing young adult books because kids need a place to escape, just like adults.  I like the audience.  I think they are an awesome bunch of peeps and not so stereotypical as adults make them out to be.
  • I write fantasy because kids, like adults, want to escape reality.  They want to go to a place where they can defeat any and all odds, where they can be the hero.
  • Fantasy is no different than any other genre in the lessons that can be taught and learned.  The lessons are just more intense.  The situations are taken to the extreme, but in the end, the hero ends up believing in himself and what he can accomplish, if he puts his mind to a task. I can’t think of a more practical lesson for a teen.
  • As for writing being an egotistical thing to do…well, yes it is.  It’s also a very giving art form.  We see the world a different way.  We hear dialogue differently.  We are always asking the proverbial question, What if?  Our dreams become more than images in our brains.  They take on a life of their own.  Unlike the general populace, writers have an inexplicable urge to share those dreams, those stories with others.  To do so, we have to share our deepest secrets, our hopes, our fears.  Unflinching courage is required to write.  Even more courage is required to ‘put it out there’ for others to read.  Rejection is very hard on a writer because writing is so close to our souls.  It makes us vulnerable and it takes a long time, sometimes years, to toughen our hide.  Even then, negative reviews still stab at our core.  And yet…we keep on because we have a story that has to be told.

In my case, I like fantasy because it is true escapism.  Of all the stories I clung to as a child, it was the fairytales that stuck with me the most.  The shining knights on white horses that rescued those in distress, the castles…magic.  Fantasy took me away from my problems of the here and now.  It made me invincible.  I could picture myself in gowns, or dressed in a poet shirt and trousers, fleeing on a horse through the woods from some despicable evil, a sword at my side.  There was always a sense of honor, integrity, a belief in doing what was right, not what was easy.  There was always a sense of danger around every corner, along with a knowing that the hero would prevail against all odds.  For me, fantasy provided, and still does, an escape, a release from the tensions of modern life.  The characters often face problems far more serious than our own.  Look at Katniss in the Hunger Games – forced into a game of life and death to save her sister and her family.  Fantasy readers understand that, no matter how big the problem (which are usually much bigger than our own), our hero will prevail.  It teaches us not to ever give up.  After all, if a seventeen year old can kill a dragon with a magic stone, then the seventeen year old reading the book may look at his Geometry test with a bit more confidence.

I found that writing fantasy is more difficult than reading it.  We ask our readers to suspend belief with a completeness that is not required in other genres.  We have to push the boundaries.  We ask our readers to invest themselves not only in a made-up tale, but a made-up world.  I think writing fantasy reminds people of how necessary it is to dream, to never lose your childish imagination.  Think about it.  Why do you think Disney is so popular?

I do write other types of fiction but no other genre fuels my imagination the way fantasy does. I shrug and say, So what.  I’m a hopeless romantic and dreamer in love with tales of King Arthur and Merlin.  If you ask me, the world would be better off with a little more magic.  What do you think?

I have a novel to publish, short stories to edit, and a new novel to write in 30 days. I’m swamped.


Remember this fantastic scene from the Princess Bride?

Swap the words for the title of this post and that’s me facing down NaNoWriMo which starts a week from today. Am I nuts?

Unlike Prince Humperdink, I am not a planner. I don’t outline, I don’t figure out my characters or what they’re doing. I just write. Now, I do have a plan in my head. I know where I want to start and how I want to end but that’s it. I guess you could say my writing style reflects my everyday look at life.

I don’t plan. In fact, I hate to plan because nothing ever goes right when I plan. The best vacations I’ve ever had were the ones where no plans were made except to say “We’re going on vacation to [fill in the blank]”. Once we got to wherever we were going, my family and I did whatever caught our interest. We’ve never had an itinerary to uphold.

One of our best vacations was the one we took two years ago to Key West over Labor Day weekend. It was literally a spur of the moment trip, completely unplanned. I told the boys we were going to the Keys the next day (you should have seen their faces! priceless!) and to go to bed early. I got online and made reservations for us and the pooches (they love traveling, too) at a fabulous Sheraton Hotel on Key West beach (at an AWESOME rate that I couldn’t even believe myself] and off we went. I even took 1 extra vacation day from work so we would have 4 fab days in the Florida Keys. I got to live out two of my dreams: to see Hemmingway’s house and stand at the southern most tip of the United States. Kewl!

Hopefully, NaNoWriMo will offer the same opportunity to fulfill one of my dreams: to write and finish the second installment in my 3-part saga. I have butterflies in my tummy, my nerves are starting to twitch, and my brain is gearing up to face the unknown. The trip is going to be a fantastic one and I’m going to learn a lot, especially about myself. Can I stay focused? Can I make and accomplish goals? I believe I can. What I am sure of as a writer, is if I can get through and succeed at NaNo, I can succeed at anything. Today – Little Town, Florida. Tomorrow, New York! Look out world! I’m coming for you!!!

(gotta love the ‘I am awesome’ message!)

Is Your Self-Esteem Beating You Up?


How many times have you looked at the project you are working on and said, “What the heck am I doing?  This is a load of crap!  No one is going to want to read this!  My writing sucks!” 

At least once or twice, right?  But yet you keep writing.  Why?  Why all this self-doubt?

I think it is all because we begin to compare ourselves to whatever is out there and selling well and think, “My story isn’t anywhere near as good as [insert best-selling author’s name].”  Excuse me.  Hello, but when did we get in a competition with best-selling authors who, up until their first book became a best-seller, was in the exact same spot as you?  Remember, they all had to start somewhere.  They weren’t born best-selling authors.  This kind of thinking is toxic.  Toxic to you and your writing.

So how do you overcome this thinking?  I think we need to understand the difference between talent and skill.   

Deep down inside all of us writers, we all believe we are or have the potential to be really incredible authors.  Otherwise, why would we write or seek agents or publishers if we thought we were bad?  And why would a bad critique send us scrambling for a box of chocolates and/or a tub of ice cream and days of depression if we didn’t believe we had what it takes to be a published author?  Are we confusing talent and skill?

The way I see it, talent is something we’re born with.  It’s the drive that makes us write (even if we think we suck).  The talent is that voice or the characters or the plot that speaks to us in the middle of the night – the very ones that make us get up and write them down before we forget.  Talent is what makes us put aside one manuscript and begin another.  Talent is being a slave to the written word.  If writing is your passion, if it drives you every day of your life, then you have talent for writing. 

But just because you have talent, do you automatically have the skills to write?  Um, no, but here’s the beauty of it:  you can learn skill.  See, writing is no different than any other art form.  To perfect it and become the best at whatever it is you have talent for, you have to practice for hours, days, weeks, years, to perfect your craft, your talent.  How do you go about doing this?  Well, if you’re a writer, you write.  You write a lot and you read.  Read, read, read.  Anything and everything.  You study how your favorite authors put together words to make them come alive for you.  You find out what it is that makes you hunger for their next story and then see how you can incorporate those same things into your own writing.  If you find you have to force yourself to read and write, that you lack drive and motivation, then maybe writing isn’t your talent.  However, if reading and writing infiltrate every second of your day, if it is your passion then you have talent.  Now you just need to perfect the skills to be the best, and heaven knows there are plenty of books out there to give you advice on how to be the best writer ever.  You can also obtain skills through school, writing classes, blog sites, crit groups and writers’ groups.  All of these tools will help to develop your natural talent and turn it into something for the world to see.  Will the journey be easy?  No.  Will there be blocks in the road and pain along the way?  You can bet on it, but as with anything worthwhile, the climb to the top, the dings and scrapes you’ll get on the way, will be worth it in the end.

So, the next time you come across a part of your book you don’t like and you begin to question yourself as a writer, stop and ask yourself, are you questioning your talent or skill?  Odds are it’s your skill and that can be fixed.  And always remember, not everyone is going to like what you write.  That doesn’t mean you don’t have talent or you’re a bad writer.  It just means you’re not going to please everyone, so don’t try.  Difference of opinion is a beautiful thing. 

So, now you know you have talent, stop beating yourself up and write.  The world is waiting for the next great author. Why shouldn’t it be you?