Failing is a strong word to use when we talk about writing, mostly because writing is an ongoing journey, and so it’s almost impossible to say that we’ve “failed” at it. However, this doesn’t change the fact that many writers DO feeling like they are failing at writing.
Whether we’re not living up to our own standards, or we’re not showing up for our writing commitments, the feeling of failure as a writer is common for most of us. And although we might think the reason we feel this way is obvious, the real issue that leads us to feel like we are failing at writing is difficult to see clearly.
What’s going on much of the time for writers when we feel like we are failing at writing is that we are out of alignment with our creative calling. This often causes us to constantly look around at what everyone else is doing and compare our writing to the way other people write. Writers usually do this when we get scared that we—and our writing—aren’t good enough. We play the comparison game in an attempt to figure out what we should be doing that might make us successful as writers, and then we get lost in that game.
This always ends in us feeling worse about ourselves, and very discouraged about our writing. It also increases the fear we were already feeling, which builds a wall of resistance inside of us. After that, tuning into our creativity—and expressing our truth as a writer—is harder than it ever was before.
I talk more about this in the video below:
I’m teaching a new class starting January 10 called Finding Your Writing Voice, and we’re going to be working together to learn how to move beyond comparison syndrome and into our true creative calling as writers.
We’ll be covering topics like:
How to find our true writing voice in memoir AND fiction
How to deal with negative reactions to our writing from others
How to overcome self-doubt in ourselves to move forward
If this sounds like a class that would be helpful to you at this time, please be sure to SIGN UP for my newsletter HERE to get all the updates on the class, and SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel HERE to get more videos in this series. If you have any questions about this class, you can send them to me here.
My next video on this topic is about the easiest way to stop blocking your creativity. I’ll see you then!
Lauren Sapala is the author of Writing on the Intuitive Side of the Brain, The INFJ Writer, The INFJ Revolution, and the creator of Energy and Intuition for INFJs, an online course for INFJs on intuition, relationships, creativity, and more. She is also currently offering a free copy of her book Firefly Magic: Heart Powered Marketing for Highly Sensitive Writers to anyone who signs up for her newsletter. SIGN UP HERE to get your free copy.
