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Have Confidence In Your Writing!Boosting Facts About Writing

By on October 11, 2019

When it comes to having confidence in your writing, there are lots of exercises you can try. Learning about writing, doing it more, having a mantra, and gathering all your positive feedback can all help you to remember what you love about the craft and why you should keep doing it.

However, sometimes that isn’t enough, and you need some cold hard facts to help you get through. So here are some fascinating truths about writing that might help you when your confidence is low.

Confidence in your writing may not come easily!

Many writers don’t achieve success until much later in life. Some of the most famous include:

Raymond Chandler

Chandler didn’t publish his first novel until he was 44 years old. He was never satisfied with the publishing world or writing success either, once writing to a friend saying, “there is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.”

Anna Sewell only wrote one book, Black beauty, which didn’t get published until she was 57 (six years after she began writing it).

Harriet Doerr didn’t commit to writing until she was in her sixties. Her award-winning novel, Stones of Ibarra, was published when she was 74.

Also, many writers have been rejected over and over again, only to go on to receive huge success. 

Louisa May Alcott

Alcott was told by one publisher: ’Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott. You can’t write.’ (At least nowadays, rejections are impersonal and often encouraging, right?). She ignored him and went on to have Little Women published - and it’s still widely read today.

Stephen King

Carrie was rejected 30 times before being picked up by Doubleday. It went on to sell over a million copies. 

J.K.Rowling

Of course, let’s not forget J.K. Rowling, who was repeatedly rejected, and finally, Bloomsbury agreed to take on the manuscript for the measly advance of £1,500. Her editor suggested she become a teacher, as earning a living from her work would be unlikely!

If you think you are taking too long and will never finish your novel, just remember that some now very famous books took ages to write. Some of these include:

Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell), who took over a decade to write her novel - one that went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Another award winner, Junot Diaz, again took ten years to complete her novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. She got stuck halfway through, despite trying to write every day, and abandoned the story before returning to it, completing it, and achieving great success.

The Lord of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien is pretty epic but still took around 15 years to complete! 

So there you have it, even when you are feeling low, and like there is no hope, and that you should give up, try to remember that there are so many now successful authors that felt the same as you did, that failed as much as you did, and that kept on going regardless. So bear in mind that writing is subjective, and have confidence in your writing. You have as good a chance as anyone to achieve your dreams - as long as you don’t give up, that is!

So now you know how to have confidence in your writing, why not discover how to get over imposter syndrome.

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bethany cadman
Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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