How To Take The Shackles Off Your Creative Writing Talents

How much you write – and how well you write – are far less about your writing talents than about your writing confidence. You can be the most gifted writer in the world, but if you have no confidence in your work, you’ll struggle to write much of anything.
So how can you become more confident in your creative writing? In fact, how can you become more confident in your writing abilities than you’ve ever been before?
Here’s your 3 step plan:
1. Recall a positive past experience. Think back to a time when you wrote freely and easily. We’ve all experienced the kind of writing flow where we lost track of time and couldn’t stop the words pouring out, even if it was some time ago. Take yourself back to the first of these memories that comes to you. Get into the details of that memory and relive it as fully as possible. What was happening that allowed you to write so freely? What were you seeing around you, what were you hearing in your thoughts, how were you feeling? Write out the experience as fully as possible.
2. Pick your key Components of Confidence. Look back over what you’ve written from step one above. What are the key elements, the things you need to have happening to be able to feel as confident as possible in your writing? To add more to this step, think about people you know and perceive as confident. What do they do that radiates confidence? How can you use these kind of behaviours to build your own confidence? Come up with 5 to 10 “Components of Confidence”.
3. Time for action! You now have a very good picture and description of how to be confident. It’s time to put it into action. Do all you can to recreate the Components of Confidence each time you write. This begins in your mind, by telling yourself that you’ve been confident before, so you know how to be confident again. Consider too the physical things you can do to help with your confidence – where, when and how you write, the way your desk or workspace is set up and so on.
Follow these 3 steps to boost your confidence and take the shackles off your creative writing.
Don’t fall into the trap of doing it once then expecting fantastic results for the rest of your life. Keep returning to these steps to hone your confidence more and more, and be vigilant to when it starts to fade and needs a top up!