Episode 77: [Summer Short] Why Your Writing is Better Than You Think

In this episode, Elizabeth and Stephanie chat about how quickly self-doubt can creep up on you when it comes to your writing, but the truth is your writing is better than you think. When you join critique groups and read within your genre, you'll discover you know more than you think.

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Transcript

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This is our summer series where we're recording in person at this beautiful backdrop, and these episodes are shorter. Today we're gonna be talking about battling the self-doubt we feel as writers by reading within our genre. So this was something that came up not too long ago, just a discussion that Stephanie and I had about how. You know, as writers we really can be hard on ourselves sometimes. Mm-hmm. And while we do share our writing with each other and get very positive feedback, and sometimes that's really helpful in like getting rid of that imposter syndrome or just that feeling that like, oh, what I'm writing is garbage today. This is no good. Am I making any progress? The other thing that has really worked to help that is reading other books within our genre and. What, what I mean when I say this is not necessarily like the bestseller list books in your genre. I'm talking about the other books that writers like yourself are self-publishing or the small indie presses, that kind of level, but in your genre, because there have numerous times, as we were reflecting back that we each have encountered books in our genre and realized, oh, I can write. This, well, if not better, like I, I've got a heartfelt story and I'm even more raw in it, or I'm even more this or. My characters are more developed than this, or I have better dialogue. And so it's like we play the comparison game already, but we're playing it with the wrong people. We're playing it with the like traditionally published multimillion selling copy, you know, Abby Jimenez or you know, Sheryl Strait or Glennon Doyle or whatever, depending on the genre, right? Yeah. And it's like, okay, if we're gonna play the comparison game anyways, let's actually do an accurate comparison. Because when we do, we find that we are actually much more up to snuff than we give ourselves credit for most of the time. Yeah, it, it is really helpful to be a beta reader and if you've been following our series, we had a earlier episode where we talked about that a little bit. You know, be a beta reader in your genre for people who are. Uh, publishing independently or through an independent publisher, um, you know, the smaller presses mm-hmm. That you find out there and not think like, oh my goodness, I have to reach this metric that's so far beyond where I am. And of course, you know, with those authors, they go through just as many trials and errors as we have, just as much self doubt. If you, you know, some of them, I've seen them in person and. It's always, that's also, you know, important to remember that at the end of the day, we're all human. We all have these human experiences, and yes, they're light years ahead of where we are, but when you start to read across your genre and find people whose books are at the level where you're entering the system, you begin to realize like. Oh yeah, I can do that. And mm-hmm. And I think about that too, because I've, you know, joined a critique group and there's many published authors in the critique group. Mm-hmm. And when we're sharing our, you know, just 3000 words of what we've written, I'm like, oh yeah. Like, I can do this when I, when I see what other people are doing. And, and that's one of the reasons why we talk so often about the writing in community. Yeah. Because. You start to realize when you're in a writing group or when you're in those spaces, you're like, I'm really not that far off. Mm-hmm. From where I wanna be. Or you can even just see your development over the course of your writing period. Right. Like as I reflect back to the writing I did when I first joined our library writers group versus what I'm doing now, or as I'm editing my manuscript, I can really see it like those chapters I wrote at the beginning of this two and a half years of writing versus the ones I just. Finished up this, you know, January through March, writing Sprint, you know, so it's, you can see it for yourself sometimes in your own work, but when you don't have that, you know, ability to have that sort of. Bird's eye view perspective then yeah, we've just kind of landed on this reading in your genre, but reading at a similar level to what the level that you'll be publishing at, you know, can really help get rid of some of that self-doubt and that lack of confidence of whether your book is, you know, on the right track or whether you need another round of editing or another set of eyes on it, whatever that may be. Um, I think beta reading is a, a great example of ways to expose yourself. Signing up to be an arc reader is another thing. I know you did that, some of that, Stephanie, you were, uh. A or you did either a beta reader, an arc read for something. Yeah, I was part of a group for romance writers specifically, and within that group it was part of a Facebook group. And, um, it has since shifted into another focus. But, uh, at the time, which was probably a year and a half ago or more. There were definitely, you know, new authors saying like, Hey, does somebody wanna read my work? And so, you know, I was like, oh, sure. You know, I'd love to read it. And it was very educational because it was good. But there were definitely, you know, areas that needed improvement. But what it made me realize is, is that I am right in pace with where they are, and it gives me more. You know, encouragement going forward because we all encounter the self-doubt and the feeling like, oh, I'm not gonna measure up. Uh, but going along with that, one of the things that I also think is important and what I've started doing more is really studying what I. If you, I mean, I know we all wanna read the best sellers and I think that's amazing. Mm-hmm. But what I would say with that is really study what they are doing. Yeah. Um, and especially in the romance genre is, has a very specific pacing and there is, I. You know, uh, expectation from readers of hitting certain beats and mm-hmm. Um, and such. And so that's one of the things I would recommend too, because I think that also helps strengthen your own skill. And in turn that. Allows for the self-doubt to be pushed a little bit further to the back or that inner critic, um, I mean Julia Cameron in the artist's way. I mean, that's a great resource if you haven't done her, you know, 13 week. Uh, program that she has through that book. Um, you, it's all, you know, you just can have the book, the Artist's way, work through it yourself. Um, and if you've ever heard her talk, she talks a lot about this, the inner critic and just mm-hmm. Giving that inner critic a name and telling them to be quiet and to just take a back seat to what you're doing because. You already have everything you need to be the writer you wanna be, and that's why we're here. You know, talking about our own self-doubt to give you that encouragement, like we're right there in it with you. Yeah. To piggyback off of what you just said, Stephanie, the fact that you can identify what is good or needs improvement in someone else's writing should boost your own confidence that you can recognize that as you go through your own manuscript and do your edits. So it's like if you can see where someone else. Is falling short. That's actually a positive on your part because that means that you recognize that in writing and therefore you can look out for it in your own. It's like when I was learning early on about like the passive versus active voice and how to switch that it's. Was quite a learning curve for me.'cause I realized I wrote in passive voice. Uh, I mean, that was like my default, right? Mm-hmm. And so as a writer, I've slowly developed the skill where now as I'm actively like drafting, I'm already thinking of the, a different way to say it that is in an active voice. And now as I go back and do the edits of those earlier chapters where I didn't have that skill yet. I'm more quickly able to figure out, okay, here's how I rework this to make it active voice. But it was something I had to learn and I used to not even be able to recognize it. Um, I had to rely on programs like Pro Writing Aid or Hemingway in order to tell me where it was passive voice, and a couple of those sometimes would give recommendations for how to reword it, and that was helpful for me to learn that process. Mm-hmm. Um, but now, now I have that skill. Now it's something that I can recognize easily in my own writing, in someone else's writing, and it's all just a part of developing yourself as a writer. That's not limited to just the craft books. Those are excellent, but it's a little bit of like a next step. Yeah. Where you then test your skill and your understanding of the craft by then trying to apply it to someone else's book and see, you know, how they met those kind of reader expectations or standards of the genre where they might have fallen short or could have had something a little bit different that might have made more sense or been better written. Um. All of that is a part of the process of developing yourself as a writer. Plus you get that bonus of counteracting your own self-doubt, telling that you know, inside critic to kick it. Yeah. So we definitely encourage you to. Find a writing community, find places where you can get outside of your writing space and again, reading in your genre to really help you work through some of those feelings of self doubt.'cause it's definitely, it's definitely helped us. So until next time, happy writing.