You can do it

This blog posts the day after our country’s election (if you live in the USA) and by the time you read this we may or may not know who our next president is. Still, I’m not here to talk about presidents or elections. I’ll leave that to the tv, radio, internet and periodicals. Lord knows we’ll be inundated as is. I’m going to talk about women today.

About a week and a half ago, I attended a women in leadership summit, courtesy of my day job. It really was fascinating to learn that on average, women limit themselves from climbing past the lower rung level of management due to the fear of being unable to create a work life balance and their lack of confidence. We learned that in my company, 69% of women and 74% of men believe they could move up a level, but only 18% of women and 34% of men believed they could make it to the officer level. While the numbers fascinated me, I can’t say they surprised me.

Earlier this year, I became a parent and admittedly, parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. So for all you stay at home moms and dads out there, don’t let anyone ever tell you that you don’t have a real job. If anything, your job trumps all others! This experience however has helped me realize that the work life balance isn’t easy but it is possible.

Still, as I learned about women and our hesitations, I realized that I personally had experienced some truth in what those at this summit said (of course there are always exceptions to the rules) and of course that made me think. I began to realize that I see a large lack of confidence and struggles to balance writing with life for the women (and men) authors I know. I specify women because I write romance and a large portion of romance authors and readers are women. I see it each day on the loops or meetings I attend: the doubt in our abilities, the fear to share our work with others, the desire to always be better. Not only do we lack confidence but many of us don’t believe we can ever reach that level of the amazing, well-known author.

I have a short bit of advice: just believe in yourself and go for it. It holds true for everything. Eventually you will have to stop rewriting and query, eventually you will have to share your work if you want the world to see it, eventually all your hard work will pay off. We writers have so many other qualities (determination, hardworking, patient, resilient, etc), there is no reason we should lack confidence or believe we can’t make it to the top.

Okay, that’s all folks. Happy writing and just remember: you can do it. You can’t just say it, you need to own it.

 

 

Filed under: Business, Toni Kelly, Writer's Life