Believe in yourself

Yesterday I wrote a sentence. That’s it, just one sentence. It wasn’t beause I didn’t want to write. I was tired — I’m always tired 🙂 — but that wasn’t it, either. It was because I was resisting my next step.

I’m at the point in my story where I have to write the big climactic scene, and to be honest, I’m a little intimidated. It’s not that I don’t think I can do it. I know I can. And I know that once I’ve written THE END, I will go back and start from the beginning again revising and revising. So, deep down, when I’m thinking rationally, I know that even if I mess up the big climactic scene, it’s ok. I can change it.

But I don’t want to muck it up. So I stalled.

I watched Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium the other night (cute movie, a bit simple) and it had a good message, one that every writer should remember. (I’m not going to tell you how the movie ended, but I am going to spill the message.)

“Believe in yourself,” the movie said, loud and clear.

As writers, we put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper because we are drawn to get down our thoughts, the stories floating around in our heads, to give voices to characters who are screaming to be heard. We write because we have a desire that wells up inside us and won’t let up until we create.

But doubts creep in, and when we sit down to write, the task sometimes seems so huge that we’d rather weed the garden in full summer heat. Hello writer’s block.

Believe in yourself. Know that you’re getting this urge to write for a reason. Sure, the first words you put on paper might not add up to much by the time they’re a sentence. Sure, the first sentences might not make any sense together in a paragraph. And sure, the first few paragraphs might be totally incomprehensible as a story. (I’m exaggerating, of course.) But that’s when the old adage “writing is rewriting” is so true. But before you can get to the rewrite, you have to write.

So, this morning, with the idea for this blog post rattling around in my brain, I sat down to write my big climactic scene. I won’t say it was easy. Part of my brain kept saying “check your email,” “go see what the weather’s going to be like today,” “go back to bed.” I managed to ignore them long enough to drag out four pages (my daily goal). The words aren’t great, but the ideas are there, and there’s nothing I can’t fix when I do the rewrite.

How are you doing with your writing? Are you believing in yourself?

Write On!

2 Responses

  1. leafless says:

    I like to write short stories, so my problems are minimal. Because of brevity of my writing, I have the incentive to just write. I’ll just revise the work later.

  2. That’s great, Leafless! And that’s the truth, we can always revise later. That’s another good tip for those of us who write longer works: Think of the section we’re writing now as a short part of the whole thing. Don’t get daunted by thinking about the whole novel, or whatever you’re working on, just think about the chapter, section, or whatever you’re doing right now. Day by day. Step by step. Thanks, Leafless.

Leave a Reply to daybydaywriterCancel reply