If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that confidence and I are not firmly acquainted. Particularly with my writing. I’ve procrastinated with my novel; fearing finishing it as I knew then I’d have to send it to agents or take the decision to self-publish. And I didn’t think it was good enough for either - or I feared being told it wasn’t good enough.
I’d get so far with my writing and then get scared so retreat and hide away.
For those of you who are new here let me briefly explain a bit more about myself. I’ve been writing for fourteen or fifteen years. I started by drafting a novel and then found the world of blogging. From there I wrote for other websites, I created different blogs for myself, I wrote for magazines, gained an agent and started to write a recipe book proposal for publishers, was rejected by publishers, joined Instagram in order to create a platform for my recipe book proposal, got sucked into Instagram, flirted with influencing and created a YouTube Channel.
You’d think being online for that long would have increased my confidence. You’d think doing all that writing would have meant, maybe, that a book was the next natural step. But something was always stopping me.
Well, not something. Someone. And that was myself.
The more I explored and created for social media the more my writing was pushed further and further backwards. With hindsight I know I was deliberately focusing on social media instead of focusing on my writing because I didn’t have any writing confidence. It was easier to create flatlays and YouTube videos that gave instant gratification rather than focus on a long-term book project.
It probably doesn’t look like it now because you’re seeing my blog in the middle of my creative journey. You might see that I’m on Instagram and YouTube sharing my writing and pictures of my writing and videos talking about writing. But it hasn’t always been like this. Believe me I’ve struggled to call myself a writer. And when I finally managed that I struggled with showing I was a writer. For a long time I would hide under my desk as soon as I sent a blog post live (metaphorically speaking). I didn’t take advantage of certain opportunities that came my way. I wouldn’t meet up with other writers or creatives. I ignored interest from a publisher because I didn’t have any confidence in my novel (why?!!!) and generally withdrew from the writing community I’d ‘grown up with’ on social media.
Despite hiding from writing my creative confidence in general was boosted by various online projects:
1. My blog gave me confidence. It got me used to writing for an audience, it got me used to sending my work out into the world. It made me a better writer, encouraged me to write with a theme or subject in mind (instead of random thoughts and ‘highlights’ from my day - I used to use my blog like people now use Facebook or Twitter!)
2. Instagram gave me confidence. My audience was bigger than my blog on Instagram and it was daunting at first to write the caption. When I first started I’d write one word like ‘poppy’ or ‘beautiful’. But over time I started to experiment with my writing. I’d write in longer sentences and paragraphs. I became descriptive and tried to show rather than tell with my words. I put my hand to different formats: videos, Stories, IGTV, talking directly to camera. Even though this wasn’t writing it still gave me confidence which fuelled my writing (when I wasn’t procrastinating).
3. YouTube gave me confidence. I never ever thought I’d create a YouTube channel. My age, how I looked, my accent, feeling like I didn’t know enough to be on there. All those things and more. But despite my fears and doubts I started a channel. I continued and managed to attract enough subscribers and views to be monetised. If I could do that, I thought, what else could I do?
But there was a downside in gaining my confidence this way. When I received hurtful comments, criticism or dreadful trolling - even the thumb down on YouTube - I realised I was relying on digital platforms to give me my confidence. And by doing this it meant when the negatives arrived my confidence was battered. What gives also takes away.
I might have been creating for social media but I was lost, unfocused, unproductive and undertaking lots of bite-sized projects but not sure why. Essentially I was flinging mud at a wall and seeing what stuck. Creatively speaking I was not happy. And it was like this for many years.
I had to find a way of building my confidence without relying on external forces so I could work towards my writing dreams. But it had to come from me. Not from the Internet.
One day, feeling like my head was full to bursting, I picked up a blank journal a friend had bought me for my birthday. In it I started writing my thoughts. At first I thought I’d be writing about my life in general: recording what books I’d read, encouraging myself to exercise, documenting our house move adventures…but soon I discovered I was journaling my thoughts about Instagram, my writing, being online, my business, my creatives fears and so much more.
Over the course of the next few months I started to learn things about myself. Maybe they were things I already knew but wasn’t listening to. But as the months went by, as we moved house, as summer turned to autumn and autumn turned to winter, as we crossed into a new year, I continued to journal. I continued to journal as the Covid-19 virus reached the UK, relaying my anxieties, scribbling ideas and still discovering more and more about myself. By now I was on my third or fourth thick journal and my thoughts were starting to come together. I was making sense of what I was writing. And, crucially, I was starting to act on the thoughts and ideas I’d been journaling.
In August of 2020 I started writing an eBook. I knew I was going to sell this through my blog rather than Amazon or contacting a literary agent (I’ll write about my reasons for this another time). And in January 2021 my eBook was finished and people have been buying it and, even better, they’ve been saying fabulous things about it.
Despite writing for fourteen years or so I have never, ever, ever seen a large writing project through to completion; for people to buy it and read before. This was my very first time.
So what had changed? How had I manage to defeat my confidence issues and get a huge writing project done?
The answer is through journaling. My journal gave me confidence in myself. It enabled me to see why I was fearful and, even though it didn’t stop those fears, it helped me push past them so I could achieve a writing goal of mine. It stopped me from making the same mistakes over and over because I started to see a pattern with my behaviour.
Most importantly it enabled me to work out what my creative purpose was. All these years I’d been flinging mud at walls and now I discovered what was at the core of my writing dreams. By knowing my purpose my goals flowed naturally from that. Suddenly I had a path to follow. I could see where I wanted to go and, importantly, how I was going to get there.
In addition to my Writing Journal I also had a Planning Journal and a Tracking Journal. The Planning Journal enabled me to plan out my projects and tasks in line with my purpose and goals and I could see, day by day, that I was working towards my goals. This gave me motivation, focus and confidence to continue pushing forward. And my Tracking Journal helped me keep track on how far I’d come. Some days, when you’re tackling a mammoth project, you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere but seeing those blocks in the journal build up you know you’re heading in the right direction.
My eBook is all about this process. I’ve called it Journaling Your Goals: an eBook for Writers & Creatives and it tells the story of how I went from being unconfident and lost to focused and able to pursue my dreams despite a lack of self-belief. I share all the stages of the process, I’m very honest, and ask you questions of yourself so you can discover your creative purpose and start working towards your dreams and goals. Read more about it here.
If I can do it - so can you.
