C is for Confidence

I remembered at last minute but think this post will work for both A to Z and the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. Since every first Wednesday of the month is IWSG day, I decided to post C related to that aspect and came up with Confidence. Other times I've posted about struggling to finish novels or not getting distracted, and I think I've done something similar as this post but that's okay. It's a good topic.

Check out some of the other blogs with IWSG here: http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/p/the-insecure-writers-support-group.html


Confidence

Sounds like a topic for insecure writers, doesn't it? We need confidence, or in some cases maybe could go with a little less confidence, but it's a strange concept in general because of that. We need confidence and while a rare few have too much, many writer's tend to lack confidence. Why is that? Why are we such a shy group? That is the stereotype related to writers and I've been to a few conferences. Many writers are shy people and struggle with confidence and communicating. Yet in order to get published we need those very tools.

Quite the little situation we have isn't it?

I sometimes wonder if I have too much confidence in my writing.

Hear me out. I have nothing published yet. I haven't done much sending out at this point so that's understandable. I am rather shy in person (yep, I'm one of them). Yet when I am reading my own writing, while I see there is room for improvement, I don't ever have the "wow I suck. This is terrible. What the heck am I doing?" reactions ever. On occasion I will say to myself, "hmm that won't be going anywhere, oh well, but I like that part." That's it.

So many of my friends struggle to write because they will write something and then thing it's awful and not finish it. They read over the draft they wrote a few months ago and say how bad it is. I know many artists and writers who are their worst critics.

I don't do that. At the other time, I don't feel quite like I have a lot of confidence. I am not sitting here thinking "oh, I'm so awesome that people would be fools not to publish my stuff" so don't worry on that. But it still makes me wonder. Do I need more confidence? (To send work out and such.) Or do I need a little less confidence? (To say the draft is horrible and I suck before coming to terms and finding ways to rewrite and edit.)

I'm not sure.

Do you have enough confidence or too much?