On Learning and Relearning to Trust Myself

I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”
— Joe Abercrombie

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

On a crisp fall day in 1998, I found myself raking leaves in our front yard while my daughters, ages one and four, played in the huge leaf pile. The sun was shining, the air crisp with the scent of leaves and my girls were giggling happily as they played. I thought to myself: This is it, this is why I quit my job, why I want to be at home with my daughters.

In truth, most days weren’t as perfect as this one. In that time of life, nearly every day was filled with a sea of toys, tantrums and Goldfish crackers.

But on that day, after we cleaned up the yard, I put my girls down for a nap, fired up the computer and wrote an essay about this classic motherhood moment. On a whim, I sent the essay to a magazine that targeted mothers. To my surprise, they published it.

I hadn’t planned to write that essay. I simply sat down at my desk and wrote about my experience. And when I did that, I discovered the joy of expressing myself through words. That joy motivated me to write and publish more essays. That is how I became a writer.

As the girls got older and I had a bit more time, I decided to get more serious about my work. I read books about writing. Found job boards that posted freelance work opportunities. I followed bloggers who gave tips for building a successful writing career.

The more I learned, the more I realized: I’d been doing everything wrong. I was calling editors on the phone when I should have been emailing them. I was asking them if they had a topic they wanted me to write when I should have been pitching the latest trending ideas for a great article. I didn’t know there was a right and a wrong way to go about pitching, let alone that there were ‘rules’ for the writing itself.

Learning all this put my brain into overdrive. I started doing everything that was suggested. I went to the library and perused magazines to become more familiar with their editorial style. I emailed editors instead of calling them. I followed article and essay structure, word counts and turned my work in a day early to impress editors.

Trying to remember and follow all the rules was making me a little crazy. Worse yet, it caused me to procrastinate. I would no longer dare contact an editor if I hadn’t gone through all the proper steps beforehand. I kept second guessing every pitch letter I crafted, every article I wrote. Jeanette, the mean girl in my head, kept telling me every idea I had was terrible. She drove any confidence I had right the heck out of me. I was writing less and less.

One day I was complaining about all of this to a friend. I’ll never forget what she said: “When it comes to writing, you are your biggest obstacle.” Ouch. This resonated because it was true. I was so self-critical that I could barely see anything through to fruition.

If I wanted to continue to write and publish, I needed to learn how get past myself.

I decided to go back to doing things the old way, my way. I contacted editors any old way I felt like. I skipped the lengthy research and asked editors what they were looking for. I sometimes pitched article topics I’d want to read to the magazines I already knew and liked. And it worked. My writing work picked up. I both won and placed in a few essay contests.

I wasn’t a complete rebel. Rules give us a basis for how to move forward in a way that works for everyone. Editors need writers who know their grammar, word counts and deadlines. I just followed my instincts for getting the work and then once I got an assignment, I wrote out all my thoughts, ignoring any rules about writing. I did things in a certain order. Map out my ideas. Write. Then edit (apply the rules).

Now, many years later, I’m working on a novel. I’ve never written fiction before, so this is all new. This is both exciting and scary. I started this book a couple years ago. I had an idea, took a few notes, and started writing. Then, I got stuck about halfway through. Of course I did.

So I read a few books on how to write a book. I took a couple online classes. I learned the rules for writing fiction. Once again, my brain went into overdrive. I kept worrying about which direction to take the story. I couldn’t decide which character should be the protagonist or if my plot was plausible. Then, for a while, I just quit working on it altogether.

Jeanette (remember her, the mean girl in my head?) took this opportunity to tell me I was right to quit. I had no idea what I was doing. Ugh. Stupid Jeanette. But really, stupid me: I’d walked this road once before years ago, which meant I already knew what to do. So yea, shut up, Jeanette.

Once again, I’m ditching the rules, for now. I’m pretty familiar with them at this point. They float around in my brain and I do consider them from time to time. But I keep all those rules at a distance. I don’t want to be held captive to them. What I want is to get this novel written.

I’m trying to listen to my gut. To trust my instincts on what would make for a great story. I’m doing a lot of thinking upfront while I slowly continue to put words to the page. Will this work? I guess we’ll see. I find solace in the fact that this strategy has worked for me in the past.

What’s interesting to me in all of this is why I’m having to relearn this lesson about trusting myself when it comes to writing. The obvious answer is that I didn’t really learn the lesson. But why is it that with some things, I learn the lesson the first time around, while with other things, the lesson presents itself over and over again?

I think it has to do with stakes, or in other words-fear.

I really love writing. What if I find out, even after all these years, that I’m terrible at it? What if I find out I don’t have what it takes to write a well-crafted novel? Discovering this would sting. More than sting. It’s why I was avoiding the rules in the first place. Because if I didn’t really try, failing wouldn’t hurt near as much.

Part of me still wants to play it safe. To quit writing and never really discover whether I have the chops to write a great novel. Jeanette supports this: she prefers I not try at all rather than fail. But she’s wrong, because not trying at all would be the biggest fail.

I’d love to tell you I have this all figured out. That now that I understand fear is the driver behind my avoidant behaviors, I no longer struggle. But it’s simply not true.

The fear still exists. But what I have to help me through is a plan, the same plan I used years ago: Map out my ideas. Write. Then edit (apply the rules).

I used to believe life was a straight line that moves slowly upward as we live and learn. But I think life is more like a zigzag of events that sort of go all over the place; up, down and all around.

We live.

We learn.

We try.

We falter.

And then, we learn again.

Amen.