Gaining Writing Confidence — My Writing Hack Part 2

Writing confidence: As writers, we all struggle with losing our writing confidence, fighting back doubts. In my last article I discussed some of the causes we lose that confidence. In this piece, we’ll look at the ways we can it back.

Regaining Your Writing Confidence

Hopefully you’ve done some mind work, based on my previous post “Losing Writing Confidence”, so you’ve identified the causes of why you lost your confidence in the first place. (If you haven’t yet, go back and read that article). Now, what can you do to regain your writing confidence? Here are some things that are working for me:

• Realize writing is like riding a bike. It’s not as if you can unlearn good grammar, voice, style or vocabulary. In most cases, if you were a decent writer before, your ability to write well has not changed. If you had writing confidence before, use that past experience to have writing confidence now.
• Just write, right? As I mention in the article that was the genesis for this piece, the more you see (and write about), the more you see (and can write about). My wife — a successful author, consultant and workshop trainer — discussed this with me, and said, simply: “Confidence is gained in the doing.” That goes for everything, including writing confidence.
• Remember: Words are words. Writing exists to communicate ideas. Whether you’re a business writer who is busy writing social media for an assisted living center, or a PowerPoint training deck, or a technical manual, or marketing material, or an author (my wife) penning historical fiction romance novels or self-help books on confidence, freedom and the Constitution, you are communicating ideas. It may take some adaptation of style, but your expertise is in communication. Have writing confidence in that!
• Continue writing! A wise man once said: “As we persist in a difficult task, we can do the task more easily. It’s not because the task becomes easier, but because our ability to do the task increases!” The more often we write, the better we become. We see our improvement, and our writing confidence increases.
• Write with a cause and a purpose. I call that “Faith-based” or “Spirit-led” writing. When we know that we are supposed to be writing, and what we are supposed to be writing about, it becomes so much easier to “go forth and write!”
• Review and repurpose. We all write a lot. We all have pieces from back in the day. Some are our best work, and maybe shouldn’t be touched at all. But other writing pieces can be reviewed and repurposed. This article was once part of a much larger piece. I reviewed it and realized: It’s much too big! So I split it in half, making the sum of two pieces much bigger (and better) than the original. Often, we discover (or remember) how good we are as writers!

Write A Lot, With Variety

As writers, we’ve been told that we need to focus, find our niche, specialize. I don’t agree with that completely. I increase my writing confidence when I take the time and make the effort to:

• Write “stuff.” One of my favorite t-shirts, from Salt Lake Community College’s Community Writing Center, says “I write stuff.” People ask me all the time: “What do you write?” What do I tell them? “I write stuff.” Then I give them my elevator speech about all the business writing I have done and still do. I ALWAYS end by telling them: “I write poetry and creative prose. My business writing puts food on the table, but my creative writing feeds my soul.” I’ve learned that, no matter what writing project I’m working on, when I take time to write creatively, to write poems, prose or blogs or posts that bring me joy or make me think, my writing confidence improves.
• Have variety in form and topic. For me, my confidence took a hit as I was pigeon-holed into writing RFPs and grants. When I was asked to write social media posts, blogs, even poetry and creative pieces, I doubted. It wasn’t until I got busy doing different types of writing that my writing confidence dramatically improved. Now, I have marketing plans, grants, haiku, haibun, blog posts on nature and observational and experiential writing, videos, marketing pieces, training, novels and non-fiction books all running around in my head. Most importantly, my confidence is high.

Writing Confidence: Beating Back The Doubt

Following these steps dramatically increases my writing confidence. Are there growing pains? Yes. Are there moments of concern where I waver and doubt? Of course! But, after I run through these steps, as I do Continuous Process Analysis and Continuous Process Improvement, the bottom line is that I know that I’m a wordsmith. That’s my calling. If it has to do with words, I can create it. So, I do. I write stuff.

Write on!

Dave / CyranoWriter

Writing Resources:

Here are some resources to boost your writing confidence:

There’s a reason my wife gives me such good advice about writing. She’s LIVED it. And she’s created a Create a WOW book course about it and conducts LIVE Q&A’s with authors twice a month. You can find that here.

Also, check out her “Authors: Breakthrough To Creative Freedom” if you are struggling with a case of writer’s block.

If you know what you want to say but you need some help, I recommend checking out CoachGlue. Their courses and programs are simple to use and inexpensive.

For example, CoachGlue has a great FREE program that you can use to build your Instagram following. Get “21 Ways to Increase Your Instagram Following” here.

A CoachGlue brainstorming program is “How to write your book in 30 days — with Checklists“.

If you’re truly struggling with writer’s block (different than fear or lack of writing confidence), try this Workshop — 4 Weeks to Smash Through Writer’s Block.

And sometimes, we just need to be organized. Here’s a Book Planner Bundle that will help.

(And send me your thoughts! I want to find out what you’re thinking!)

David Kuhns

Dave has decades of writing and editing experience, including: Web content, marketing collateral, marketing, communications and business plans, curriculum development, communications collateral, book ghostwriting and editing, social media, technical writing, blogs, local search engine optimization. Clients have included: AT&T, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and assorted local businesses.