As I’ve said before many times on
this blog, I started writing seriously, with the intention of making it my life’s
work, when I was eighteen. I’m fifty-six now. I’ve been writing for almost forty
years. (It’s hard for me to wrap my head around that number. Forty? Really?)
In that time, I haven’t become an international bestseller with a string of
movie and TV adaptions of my work. I’m not rich, and I haven’t won a truckload
of awards. But I’ve been regularly selling my fiction (and sometimes nonfiction)
to traditional publishing markets for the majority of my career, and while I
might not have a shelf full of awards, I’ve won a few. I’ve also taught college
writing classes for most of this time. I like to write about writing, not only
to help other writers but because everything about writing fascinates me, and every
time I teach – whether in a class, at a workshop, or through an article or blog
post – I’m able to clarify my thought and ideas about my art form. (Plus,
teaching gives me a steady paycheck, healthcare, and retirement benefits, and
them ain’t small potatoes.)
Coming this September, my how-to-write
book Writing in the Dark (named after this blog) will come out from
Guide Dog Books, an imprint of Raw Dog Screaming Press. It’s available for preorder
now. Links are at the bottom in case you don’t want to read the rest of this
before ordering, and who could blame you?
One of the things I’ve noticed over
the last few years is the increasing number of how-to-write books produced by
self-published writers who’ve published few other books. I’m not here to trash
these writers. Anyone can learn anything from anyone at any time, and if a
particular how-to book speaks to you and helps you grow as a writer, then who
cares what credentials its author has? (Although I’d say the more experience a
how-to writer has in the field, the more likely their book will be useful to
you.) Seeing those books got me wondering when in their career is a writer
ready to produce a how-to book? And what does ready even mean? Was I ready
to write Writing in the Dark? Had I earned the right to present myself
as some sort of expert? I hardly felt like one. For that matter, do I have the
credentials – the experience, the knowledge – to even write this blog?
I had, as you might guess, doubts.
One of the great – and maddening –
dichotomies of being a writer is the endless struggle between believing your
work is brilliant and that you know what the hell you’re doing and believing
your work is shit and that no sane person would ever listen to your advice. If
you only think that you’re a genius and that we’re incredibly fortunate that
you share your stellar writing and amazing insights with the rest of us, then
god bless you. The rest of us aren’t so self-assured.
People are sometimes surprised to learn
that I still struggle with self-doubt. “But you’ve published so much, and you’ve
been teaching forever!” Doesn’t matter. Self-doubt is emotional, not rational. Even
so, there are some rational reasons for me to doubt myself as a writer.
·
There
are already more books than anyone could possibly read in a lifetime. The world
doesn’t need me to produce any more.
·
If
I didn’t write a book (or teach a class), someone else would, and that someone
could easily be as accomplished as I am, if not more so.
·
No
matter what I produce, how many people I help, or what I achieve, it will
always – always – fall short of what I can imagine. Therefore, in a
sense, I’m always doomed to failure (in my own perception). Glass half full?
Half empty? I’m not sure there is a glass, let alone any damn water.
But I’ve been able to continue writing
and teaching for almost four decades despite my self-doubt. How do I do
it, and more importantly, how can you?
1) Realize you’re
doomed and accept your fate.
For whatever reason – whether we
were born to write, chose to write, or some combination of the two – we’ve
gotten hooked on writing and we can’t stop if we wanted to. If we didn’t put
words onto the page, we’d still be coming up with ideas all the time, but they’d
have nowhere to go. We’d still create, just in our heads. Nothing can stop us
from creating one way or another, and we might as well admit it, make our peace
with it, and get on with our work, self-doubts and all.
2) Writing keeps
you sane – and that’s more than enough.
If I go too long without writing,
everyone in my family knows it. I get grouchy and depressed (well, more
depressed than usual), and I’m not a lot of fun to be around. Writing gives me
a way to get out all the wild and crazy thoughts that swirl around in my brain
24/7, allowing me to bring some measure of order to them. I enter into an
almost meditative state when I write, and when I’m done for the day, I’m
usually relaxed, calm, and as close to content as I can get. This mental benefit
alone is reason enough to write, and it’s plenty of reason to keep going despite
your self-doubts. And what and how much you accomplish in terms of publishing isn’t
as important as tending to your mental health. For so many of us, writing is
self-care. Don’t let your doubts stop you from taking care of yourself.
And here’s something you might not
have considered before: Engaging in too much self-doubt is a form of self-harm.
We use our doubts as a weapon against ourselves for whatever reasons. We believe
we aren’t good enough, we don’t deserve to succeed, don’t deserve to be happy,
that we deserve to be miserable, etc. Sometimes it’s not as important where our
self-doubts come from as it is how we wield them against ourselves. We need to
try to be kinder to ourselves.
3) Writing (and
publishing) can get you out of your own damn head.
I live my life primarily in my own
head – I read, I watch TV and movies, and I muse about everything I come into contact
with. I interact imaginatively with the world, and all of these activities feed
my imagination. I get irritated when something pulls me out of my head, like a
loud noise or a weird smell or a chore or a need to attend to a basic
biological function (like eating). But writing can be shared with other people
(through both publishing and teaching), and that helps me not stay in my head
all the time. It helps me connect to the world and the people in it. I get to
meet readers, other writers, editors, agents, students. I get to have actual
conversations with actual people. Making these connections is healthy, and it’s
worth combatting – or at least learning to live with – any self-doubts I have
about writing. Hopefully, it can be the same for you.
4) Writing leads
to growth.
Self-actualization is high on the
lists of things I need in life. A therapist once told me that I was “hell-bent
for growth.” Everything I learn about writing and teaching, everything that I
experience because I publish my work, helps me grow as both an artist and a
human being. My need for self-actualization is stronger than my self-doubts. In
fact, dealing with self-doubt is more potential for self-actualization,
so it’s a win-win for me. If you can focus on the growth aspect of writing
more, maybe it will help you deal with your self-doubts.
5) Focus on the
writing, not the outcome.
It’s not about you – it’s about the
story. Focus on the characters, the events, the language, everything that you’re
trying to get down on the page. Forget yourself. Remember how I said earlier
that writing is like a meditative state for me? I do experience self-doubt as I
write, but each time I do my best to let go of those thoughts and refocus on
the writing. I take a breath, relax, seek a balance between my self and the
page, and I do my best to stay there as I write. I’ve written before about how
attachment to a specific outcome makes it hard to create, even such simple
outcomes as This Must Be Good. If you’re not tied to a specific outcome, then
you can more easily forget yourself and stay in the moment as you write. Doubts
are the result of worrying about whether or not you’ll achieve a particular
outcome. It’s okay to have doubts, but you don’t have to dwell on them, and you
don’t have to give them any more power than they already have. Just write.
6) Use your
support network.
I hope you have one, whether in
physical life or online. I’ve been lucky. I’ve never had anyone discourage me
from writing. Quite the opposite. So when my doubts get to be too much, I can
go to my wife, my brother, my kids, or any number of writer friends for support.
Hell, just reading social media posts from my writer friends – or writers I
admire from afar – can help remind me that I’m not alone, that other writers
experience the same shit I do and manage to find a way to keep going. You have
to be careful not to let the writer’s disease – envy – get hold of you, though.
If you start comparing yourself to other writers – Why did she get a movie deal
and I didn’t? How come his work is translated into fifty different languages
and I only have one story translated into Esperanto? – you’ll feed your
self-doubts and make them bigger and stronger. Don’t be afraid to ask your
support network for a pep talk. We all need them from time to time.
7) Do a
reality-check.
I’m dysthymic. This means I suffer
from a constant low-grade depression that, if I’m not careful, can become a far
more serious depression. Part of this is that I view the world, and hence my
writing, through a distorted filter. I’m prone to see the worst in every situation,
and knowing this about myself tells me where a lot of my self-doubt comes from.
Knowing this doesn’t automatically help me. I’m incapable of believing positive
things about myself, to the point where I almost can’t perceive them. It’s hard
to explain, but those positive things don’t seem real to me. (I imagine it’s
kind of like being born without a sense of smell. You would understand the concept
of smell, but not be able to experience it directly.) Knowing I have a
distorted filter through which I perceive the world, I do my best to view any success
or praise I receive dispassionately, almost as if it belonged to someone else.
If one of my books gets a positive review, I remind myself that the reviewer’s
point of view is accurate – for them. It’s what they legitimately thought of my
book. It’s real. I don’t feel that it’s real, but intellectually,
I understand that it is. Someone thinks my writing is worthwhile, therefore, I
should write more stuff. Much of my self-doubt is due to my distorted filter,
so I do my best to bypass it.
I read reviews – good and bad – of
my work (and of my teaching) and I try to learn from them. The good feedback I
use to help counter my self-doubt, but I also use it to see what works and what
doesn’t. I learn the same thing from negative feedback, although that definitely
doesn’t help my self-doubt. If you think seeing negative reviews will only make
your self-doubt more crippling, ask a friend to find and send you only positive
reviews of your work. Read them when you begin doubting yourself too much. Your
writing won’t be loved by everyone, but it’s loved by someone, and knowing
that can help you keep working when doubts start to creep in. And, of course,
you can ignore all reviews, good and bad, of your stuff. Whatever works for
you.
8) Create a writing
persona.
I have a theory that we create a writer
self – which some people call our voice – which we use as a kind of mask or
filter as we write. New writers struggle because it takes time to create this
persona, and they haven’t done it yet. I think we create many personas to get
us through life, and they’re all aspects of us, but none of them are completely
us. I’m a husband, father, son, brother, friend, writer, teacher, co-worker . .
. I’ve learned how to be those things, learned which parts of me are those
things, and when it’s time to be a husband, I do it through the persona of Husband-Tim,
when it’s time to be a father, etc., etc. Over time, and with no real conscious
thought on my part, I’ve developed a Writer-Tim. This Tim is confident. He
knows he can write and publish because he’s done both so many times before. He
knows his work will be decent enough because of the positive reviews he’s received
over the years, and he knows his work is of a certain quality because of the
awards and award nominations he’s received in his career. This Tim has a
recognizable voice that’s different than Real-Tim (or maybe Complete-Tim would
be a better term). I recognize it when I read my own writing, and I’m always
like, Who wrote this? I know it was me, but I’m not this assured, not this good.
I don’t express myself this well. But Writer-Tim is and does. Writer-Tim allows
me to ignore my self-doubts and create.
I wish I had some idea how a
Writer-Self is developed. Maybe it grows naturally over time. Maybe some of it
is conscious choice. I’ve heard some writers say that selecting a pseudonym to
write under, even going so far as to create a fake biography for the pseudonym,
allows them to write because it’s not really them. Some people write
using the pseudonym but publish under their real name. Others write and publish
under the pseudonym. Whatever helps you deal with your doubts and keeps the words
coming.
I often show Neil Gaiman’s “Make
Good Art” speech to my creative writing classes at the end of the semester. (If
you’re not familiar with it, here’s a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plWexCID-kA)
In the speech, Neil talks about a friend of his who had the opportunity to
narrate an audiobook but was afraid she couldn’t do it. He told her to imagine
she was someone who could do it and then just do what that person would
do. She told him it helped. Imagine being a writer who can write well and
confidently, and then do what that writer would do. I wouldn’t be surprised if
that’s what a Writer-Self is: people imagining a persona, much the same way an
actor might, and then doing what they think that persona would do. I know this
sounds like weird psychology, but if it works for you, who gives a damn?
9) Learn how to
use doubt positively.
I’ve been talking about doubt as if
it’s all negative, but it has its positive aspects too. In fact, I’d argue that
it’s vital to learning, if you don’t give it too much power and let it get the
better of you. Maybe “questioning” would be a better term here than doubt. Questioning
whether a sentence communicates what I want it to allows me to consider ways of
making it better and, if one of those does a better job at getting what I want
across, I can revise my sentence. If I write a line of dialogue, I might
question if it’s really good, and that might lead me to read an article or watch
a video about writing effective dialogue, and I might learn something that will
allow me to improve as a writer. If I question whether a specific publisher is
a good one to submit to, I can ask my writing network, and then I can proceed
in confidence, whichever way I choose. This is the reason I read negative reviews
of my work too. It makes me question a story element I included or a writing
technique I employed. It makes me consider what I might do different next time.
But I don’t dwell on the negative reviews – that would be giving questioning
(really, our old nemesis doubt) too much power. Using doubt this way is like
using a sharp blade. You have to wield it carefully so you don’t end up cutting
yourself.
10) Get back to
basics.
Writing is fun and makes me feel
good. I like sharing what I write. I like learning. I like helping people. When
the doubts start whispering a little too loudly in my ear, when my thoughts become
too complex and mixed up, I remind myself of these simple things. They’re what
I need, what I am. And when I focus on these simple core aspects
of myself, my doubts may not disappear, but they cease to have power over me,
and I can do what I need to do.
I write.
Writing in the Dark
I had doubts that I could write
this book, and that if I did, it wouldn’t prove helpful to people. I wasn’t
sure I was ready to write it – experienced enough, skilled enough. I thought
about doing a book like this for years, but it took me a long time before I put
a proposal together for my agent to send out. And then it took a while before I
found a publisher. I pitched the book during Stokercon in Grand Rapids in 2019.
I almost didn’t pitch it to Jennifer Barnes at Raw Dog Screaming Press. What
would Raw Dog want with a book by me? They published really good work, literary
work, not the kind stuff I wrote. I didn’t listen to my doubts, though. The words
may be different each time, but the voice that speaks them is the same, and I’ve
learned to ignore it (although sometimes it’s easier than others). Jennifer liked
my pitch, and soon my book will be out in the world. Whenever I doubted myself
during the writing of it, I focused on two things: how much I love horror and
how much I wanted to help writers. I tried not to focus on myself, and thankfully,
I succeeded for the most part. This book was one of the fastest and easiest for
me to write. Do I have doubts about how it will be received? Sure. But I’ll
always have doubts. And that’s okay. I’m diabetic, I’m nearsighted, and as I
said earlier, I’m dysthymic. I don’t feel old yet, but my body is aging every
day. I think of self-doubt as being in the same category as these things – stuff
I have to deal with and live with, but stuff that doesn’t have to define me or
stop me. Eliminate self-doubt? Impossible. Write with it?
Absolutely.
DEPARTMENT OF
SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
As I’ve already mentioned, my how-to-write
horror book Writing in the Dark will be out from Raw Dog Screaming Press’s
nonfiction imprint Guide Dog Books on September 16th, and it’s
available for preorder now. Only the print version is up at the moment, but
eventually the ebook will be available as well. I’ll post an update when it is.
Whether you’re a writer or not, I
hope you’ll help spread the word about Writing in the Dark. While I’d
like to sell as many copies as possible for my wonderful publishers John Lawson
and Jennifer Barnes at Raw Dog, my goal for this book isn’t to make money –
it’s to help as many writers as I possibly can and to give something back to
the genre of horror. I’ll deeply appreciate anything you can to do help make
that happen.
Pre-Order Links
for Writing in the Dark
Raw Dog Screaming
Press:
http://rawdogscreaming.com/books/writing-in-the-dark/
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/writing-in-the-dark-tim-waggoner/1137057460?ean=9781947879195
Excerpts from Writing in
the Dark will appear on Writer’s Digest’s website and in Suspense
Magazine around the time the book is released. I’ll post links when they’re
available.