green-eyed monsters and how to trade them in for creatures with beautiful eyes

I’m not going to pretend, there are days when I look at my fellow writers and am overwhelmed with despair. People who are my peers, but who have series deals and several books out already, and I always start wondering where I go so wrong with my work, why I’m not there with them etc etc.

This is not productive, though god knows we all need a good wallow occasionally. Except it’s stifled my writing, because all I can look at is that compared to them I’m a failure, how my work is just not right, not commercial enough, not appealing enough to editors, or whatever. Whether this is true or not, I can’t even judge. At this point, I feel like it’s true, even though I have sold books, so obviously at some point I’ve written something that hooked editors.

I keep starting stories and then abandoning them because I can’t imagine who would want to buy them.*

So, I guess, I want to know – what are your tricks for getting yourself out of this mindset? What makes you carry on when you feel there’s no point at all to continuing?

 

*I was chatting to The Boy about this and he said ” I love you babes, but there’s no way to sugar coat this… you suck at marketing,
you have zero idea of what people will buy.” so there’s a chance I am just self-sabotaging here.