Back in October of 2020, I read a blog post by a writer who lamented being distracted by his own negative self-talk: Everything I want to write has already been written. I have nothing original to add. My prose is limp. Etcetera.
I read the post to my husband, who is a successful fine artist and no stranger to creative struggle. He listened intently. When I was through, he just shook his head.
“What IS it with writers?” he asked. “Why are they so filled with self-doubt?”
It wasn’t just a reaction to the blog post. It was commentary on what he knows from experience to be true, having lived with a certain self-doubting writer (me) for 30 years and watched my journey to publication.
Writers are far from the only professionals who are prone to self-doubt, of course. And his question was meant to be rhetorical — but the minute I heard it, I wanted to answer it. Really answer it. Not just from my own experience but with research and input from other people, writers, and experts alike.
What drives this self-doubt? Do society and culture play a role? Is self-doubt a byproduct of self-revelation? Is the crowded marketplace to blame?
And so, I formulated the questions carefully, with lots of sub-questions to get people thinking: Why are writers prone to such harsh, debilitating self-talk? What drives this self-doubt? Do society and culture play a role? Is self-doubt a byproduct of self-revelation? Is the crowded marketplace to blame? Why, oh why, do we bat around the question, with bizarre regularity, “When can I call myself a writer?” as if there were some invisible threshold over which we must pirouette in order to earn the coveted title? Does the self-doubt ever abate? Is publication a cure for self-doubt?
To find out, I sent the questions out into the writing universe. I submitted them to an online writing group geared toward female and female-identifying writers. I put them out on HARO (Help a Reporter Out). I sent them to writing friends and acquaintances and to their writing friends and acquaintances. I sent them to craft instructors. I was looking for input from a diverse set of writers at all levels. And I looked for input from those who have a backstage pass into writers’ egos and psyches: psychologists, book coaches, life coaches, editors, and agents. It was, in short, a massive ask, and the response was equally massive. What follows is a selection of the multi-faceted, thoughtful, extraordinarily candid, and generous thoughts of a multitude of writers and writing-adjacent folks who had something to say about the feeder stream for writers’ doubt, which I sorted into two categories: external causes and internal ones.
EXTERNAL FORCES THAT PROMOTE DOUBT
Rejection
As you might expect, the high rate of rejection most writers experience on their way to publication is a major perpetrator. It doesn’t take many rejections to begin to feel as if you just “don’t have what it takes” to be a writer. Even though we have been told tend to blame rejections on our writing shortcomings. Most of those who responded to my questions indicated that they feel at best dismayed by rejection notices, and at worst unable to continue submitting.
