The Struggle is Real

Every writer struggles with insecurity from time to time and thinking that their writing is awful. We question everything we’ve ever written. When we read our work over, it’s as if someone has highlighted in bright yellow all the poor word choices, sappy prose and just plain old bad writing, and that’s all we see. With every rejection letter, we wonder why we’re bothering to do this and are convinced we’ll never get published again. With every criticism from our critique partner, we cringe, consumed with knowing that not only are we bad writers, but we must have obviously gotten worse.Writing is where we pour our hearts out onto the page and then give random strangers permission to chop our hearts into pieces. And we believe them when they say what we’ve written is crap. We take it personally even when we promise ourselves we won’t. We vow we’re never going to write again, even though when we’re not writing, we’re not able to take deep breaths.We’re judged and ripped apart and ridiculed and ignored and criticized until there’s nothing left of us and of what we’ve created. And somehow, we have to shake it off, push through and confront that blank page again. Create again, edit, rewrite, edit. We have to convince ourselves that our dream is worthwhile. We have to selectively and wisely choose the criticism to believe and shut out all the rest. We have to protect the kernel of hope that whispers, “This time will be different or better.”
And we have to keep writing.