Do You Insult Yourself when You Write?

My wife is an Author Coach and she recently mentioned to me that one of her clients is having trouble with berating herself when she writes. Every time she sits down at the computer, her inner voice starts in with the insults: No one will ever want to read this piece of trash; you couldn't write a good story if your life depended on it; no one likes you, so why would they want to read your work?

Curious about this strange phenomenon, we started asking many of our clients about their inner voices and we were shocked by what we discovered. Apparently, lots of writers insult themselves when they write.

"It all comes down to low self esteem," one of our clients pontificated. "If you're constantly telling yourself how much you suck, you've built a strong defense mechanism." I think that there's some truth to this because writers have to face quite a bit of rejection. We write hundreds of manuscripts in our lifetime, and most of those wind up in a trash bin because no editor would pay us for them. But how do you escape your own self-deprecating voice in your head? Do you insult yourself when you write?

If you do, then your next goal should be to make your writing world safe. If you're constantly hurling insults at yourself when you write, you aren't going to get anything done, and whatever you do accomplish will seem like trash even if it isn't. Just because you've received a few rejection letters doesn't mean that you're a bad writer, and it certainly doesn't mean that you can't improve.

Narrow Your Audience

One of the reasons why you might insult yourself when you write is because you're allowing your work to be criticized by too wide an audience. Very few rough drafts are perfect -- or even close -- so don't go passing around copies to everyone you know until you've had a chance to revise. Share your initial works with only one or two close friends or family members to keep the criticism to a minimum. If you allow yourself to become frustrated over the flaws in a rough draft, you'll never make it as a writer.

Shut the Voices Out