Learning to Dance with Self-Doubt as a Writer with Amy L. Bernstein

Have you ever felt like self-doubt was holding your writing dreams hostage? Oh friend, you’re definitely not alone. In this episode of The Write It Scared Podcast, I had an incredible chat with the wonderful Amy Bernstein, author of Wrangling the Doubt Monster: Fighting Fears and Finding Inspiration.

We got real about the ways self-doubt creeps into our creative lives, and how—even though it's uncomfortable—it's also totally normal. Amy opened up about her own journey with doubt, what inspired her to write her book, and shared practical (and gentle!) strategies to navigate that nagging voice inside your head.

Here's what you'll find in our conversation:

• Why doubt isn't always the enemy (spoiler: sometimes it's a powerful creative ally)
  
  
  
• How to use the improv-inspired mindset of "Yes, and..." to navigate creative uncertainty and fear
  
  
  
• Real talk about handling rejection, building persistence, and finding your creative path despite doubt
  
  
  
• Personal insights and relatable experiences from Amy’s own writing journey (and a few from mine, too!)
  
  
  

If you're wrestling with doubt—and let's be honest, who isn't?—you'll walk away from this episode feeling seen, inspired, and ready to embrace your creative path, self-doubt included.

Episode Breakdown

• 00:00 – Facing doubt head-on (you've got this!)
  
  
  
• 00:28 – Welcome back to Write It Scared!
  
  
  
• 01:33 – Diving deep: self-doubt and creativity
  
  
  
• 01:55 – Meet the amazing Amy Bernstein
  
  
  
• 03:52 – Amy’s personal journey with writing and doubt
  
  
  
• 07:09 – Why doubt can be powerful (yes, really!)
  
  
  
• 20:32 – How to navigate creative risks when doubt creeps in
  
  
  
• 22:17 – Using the “Yes, and…” approach to keep going
  
  
  
• 23:19 – Embracing rejection, persistence, and growth
  
  
  
• 25:46 – Understanding doubt’s role in the creative process
  
  
  
• 27:59 – Personal stories of battling doubt (we've all been there!)
  
  
  
• 30:15 – Finding your true creative path
  
  
  
• 35:41 – Building your inner resources for writing
  
  
  
• 37:45 – Wrapping up with encouragement and final thoughts
  
  

Keep going, keep writing, and keep believing in yourself. You've absolutely got this.

Amy L. Bernstein is the author, most recently, of Wrangling the Doubt Monster: Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration, an inspirational book for self-doubting creatives. She is an award-winning novelist, a former journalist, and a certified nonfiction book coach helping authors find their best path to publishing. 

Wrangling the Doubt Monster: Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration

Author website: https://amywrites.live

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

The worst that happens to me is somebody says no. And that is not the worst thing that will happen to me in my life. And so I can put this in perspective, realize that it's not a judgment on my worth as a human being and sort of continue to take these, take these risks. And that's partly what I mean by learning to walk with doubt, because we don't banish it, but we can negotiate with it and what it does to us and how it lives in us and does not have to be the only voice that we listen to.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacy Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories. The one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It's Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi, writer. Welcome back to the Write It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey, and today I have such a fantastic conversation to share with you about self-doubt and how to learn to dance with it. And if you're a regular listener, you know that a huge part of this podcast is helping writers learn how to navigate the doubting internal stories that hold them back from writing the things that call to their hearts. So I had the pleasure of talking with Amy Bernstein. And I have to say, this was my all-time favorite conversation on the podcast. Amy and I speak very much the same language. And she wrote this amazing book called Wrangling the Doubt Monster, Fighting Fears, and Finding Inspiration. I absolutely loved it. And I would say, please do yourself a favor and go purchase this book for yourself, for your friends. It is just one of those things that you want to keep beside you, hold close to your heart, because it will feed you in times of frustration, in times of worry, in times of doubt. So here is Amy's bio, and then we will jump into our interview. Amy L. Bernstein is the author of Wrangling the Doubt Monster, Fighting Fears, Finding Inspiration, which is an inspirational book for all self-doubting creatives. She is an award-winning novelist, a former journalist, and a certified nonfiction book coach, helping authors find their best path to publishing. Amy teaches writing and creativity workshops for writers and other creatives and brings an empowering message to writers and multimedia artists around the world. Amy, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I am so thrilled to talk to you about your book. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

I am great. And thank you so much for having me on, Stacy.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yeah, so a keystone of this podcast is dedicated to helping writers overcome the variations of self-doubt that they experience. And so I was ecstatic to see your book, Wrangling the Doubt Monster, hit the shelves. And I remember learning about it. It was last fall. And I know it's been in the works for a long time, but I learned about it last fall. I think you and I were teaching at a summit together. And I immediately free ordered. So we are going to talk about that today. But before we dive into your book, why don't you share, if you would, a bit more about your journey to becoming a writer and a writing mentor with our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Absolutely. You know, my writing journey is really, really all tied up, like strands of sort of twisted DNA in my doubt journey. And it's taken me a while to realize how this is all of a piece. Because, you know, I've I've really only always been a writer in one sort or another. For decades, all my jobs have had writing at the heart of them. I think I wrote my first short story in second grade. And, you know, I was an English major in college. I did a lot of writing. I loved it. I was a kind of person who actually liked doing term papers because it was a great writing exercise. So I've always been a writer and I went on to do that professionally and worked in in DC and government many years again, mostly writing. And I was a journalist and I was an executive speechwriter. And yet I would not call myself a writer until well into my middle years, late middle years. I couldn't do it because somehow that was somebody else, somebody better than I was, somebody more special than I was, was a writer. I was just this person who happened to write. So the journey is all tied up there. I'm a lifelong doubter and a lifelong writer who couldn't call herself a writer. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

And it resonates hard. I get it. I totally understand the message of I write, but I'm I'm no, no, no, I'm not a writer. Even published authors, you know, have a struggle sometimes to own that term. So this is kind of par for the course, one doubter to another. Mine was a little different. Like I didn't start writing until much later in life. And I think that it was doubts that held me back from just believing that I, that I even could like belong in the creative space at all. So it could it shows up in all variations. Well, thank you for sharing that. And then so you've written this book, but what else do you do? I know that you do more things than just write fiction or non-fiction.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Or sit around doubt. I do more things than sit around doubting. Yes. So yeah, so I I write, I do write fiction and now this nonfiction, and I do write weekly on Substack. I'm also a certified book coach, and I do have a professional book coaching practice, and I'm specializing in helping authors in nonfiction and some authors in memoir, mostly other forms of nonfiction, to find their own best path to publishing. So I'm an accountability partner and I help writers, both published and not yet published, to really shape a nonfiction book so that it has an undeniable power and is ready to find its place, you know, out in out in the marketplace. That is extremely rewarding work. And alongside that, I also teach quite a bit online and in person. I do a lot of writing workshops and creativity workshops on all aspects of craft and as well as, you know, helping us feel that we can claim our identities as creative people. So it's all in the mix there. So keeps me pretty busy.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah. And I'm so grateful that you're in the world and that you do the work that you do. So tell us about your book, Wrangling the Doubt Monster. Who's it? What's it about? Who's it for?

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Wrangling the Doubt Monster is that little book for every self-doubting creative at every age, at every stage, and really in any profession. And it's not a how-to book, it's not a guide book, it's not really a workbook. It's a book that is meant to inspire and encourage people who have such strong doubts that it's holding them back from doing things they really deeply want to do. And so this is the kind of book where you can open to almost any page and feel very seen as a person struggling with doubt, but also feel encouraged to really kind of walk with doubt and go forward despite it, which is some of what I hint at in the book. So it really is inspiration and encouragement. It's illustrated, which kind of brings a warm and lighthearted feeling to the book. And I tell people, I tell readers, you know what, buy this, keep it next to your laptop, keep it on your nightstand, just open it up when you're kind of feeling low or stuck or unsure, and you'll find a page that will that will get you moving again.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, it it is all of that to me and and more. There is a compassion. Like I here's my copy, Amy. It is just like damn and all the thing. Like that's amazing. I love that. I love that. I absolutely love this. And there is a compassionate truth bomb like on every page. And not only is it inspiring, but to me, it does make me feel seen. And I think that'll be everyone's experience who reads this. Because I have never met a person who didn't struggle with doubt. If they if they say they don't, I don't trust them.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

No, everyone does doubt. I think we're not always in touch with it, and we don't always name it for what it is. We it comes out in other ways. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah, 100%. So one of my favorite lines, if if if it's okay, I'd love to read a line from your book because it's absolutely gonna charge you a certain amount for that, but go right ahead. Well, it's on page 25, and it says, every single act of creating is also an act of doubting. And I think that's so incredibly profound and true, and it makes it okay for me, and I hope for a lot of other people that read it, makes it okay. Like that you're not doing anything wrong because this because you have these doubts, they're part of the creative process. So what inspired you to write this?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

I think that something had to have been welling up in me for a really long time. And I think that, you know, I had stepped into my own writing life within just a couple of years and really starting to put this on paper. And I was experiencing a lot of rejection and having so much doubt about my ability to write and to write novels and do all the things. And I was really struggling with it. And I it was almost an unconscious process at the beginning, in the sense of, oh, I'm gonna write about, I'm gonna write this book about doubt, and it's gonna look like this, it's gonna look like that. It wasn't, it just wasn't even that intentional. It became intentional because it had to. I just started really honestly pouring my heart out on the page, and then obviously doing it in as structured a way as I could, but it came out almost like prose poetry, because as as readers will see, the the lines on the page, the text is almost laid out like poetry, shorter lines, you know, two lines at a time, lots of white space. It's not poetry per se, but it's stepping toward that kind of a structure and kind of a feel as well when you when you read it. And I just once I started these wellsprings of of of uh dealing with this issue, what does doubt feel like? How does it manifest itself? How does it make me feel? How does it make other people feel? I mean, I just put myself in this place of deep, like let's call it radical empathy about what this feels like. And I just knew that if I was feeling that way, other people had to be feeling that way. I'd felt that way really my whole life, and I couldn't be the only one. And I'm so glad I brought it out there because it's your, I mean, you're your proof. I mean, you and many other people, like, yes, we're we're all swimming in the same, in the same pond here. You know, we can all throw each other a lifeline.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Yeah, and one of the things that you say in the book is doubt is often something you have or you tell yourself. It's a story that you tell yourself, but you often do it in secret. And I'm a from many, many lessons learned over hard lessons learned over my life. I have learned that keeping things a secret is not a road to happiness, you know, keeping things like pretending that I'm fine when I'm not. When my outsides don't match my insides, I, you know, that doesn't really serve me. And it doesn't serve anybody else around me. I really think that by sharing what you said, radical empathy, and I think the the road to radical empathy is radical vulnerability, but we have to create safe containers to be able to move that way. And that's the one beautiful place thing about book coaching is it creates that safe container for people to be truly vulnerable, and then they can come to an understanding of their doubts, develop empathy, and from that you move forward and can create real and true lasting change.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

You put that so beautifully. You're absolutely right. I I agree completely with the way you express that. And I think we have to acknowledge that one of the reasons we keep secrets about, for example, our doubts, is because we're we live in a culture where it's still very difficult sometimes to show our vulnerability. And there, and there's a sense of shame that goes along with feeling uncertain and and uncertain about ourselves and our worth and you know our abilities and all of these things. There's a there's a sense of shame about that because we're in a culture that shows us certainty and success in in very sort of hard-edged ways. And that we're not that on the inside, we're just this puddle, right? And so I think, I think, too, there's such a fascinating gender component here because while women, of course, also struggle with these feelings of not wanting to vocalize these feelings sometimes, we are somewhat more willing to do so than many men have, who I think still have, it's not that they're not feeling it, it's just they have even even bigger barriers up against expressing it. And so I think, you know, one of my challenges is I really would like to this book to reach more men and have these conversations with more men around doubt and the vulnerability that that that that brings forward. Because I think I think they need it. I think they kind of owe it to themselves, you know, instead of because they'll still cope quietly and in silence. And I think that's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Yeah, I agree. I love Brene Brown, which is where I learned a lot about just cultivating empathy and compassion for myself and being vulnerable and what that meant. One book that particularly inspired me was The Gifts of Imperfection. And I saw myself in that book so hard. But I remember her doing a talk about it. And there was a man in the audience who came up to her and said, This is all great and fine, but what about me? It doesn't really apply to my lens. And she's like, I'm sorry, I don't research men. And he's like, Well, hmm, that's a problem. She does, you know what? You're right. Anyway, I I just I disagree that sometimes they they get left out of the equation, as do, as, as do non-binary, as do others, you know? So, okay, well, could you touch on how your book redefines doubt as something that a creative hopes to avoid and instead indicates one is more or less on the right track in their creative pursuits?

SPEAKER_00 15:23

So I think you're asking what is the upside of doubt? Yeah, what's the upshot? Right, right, yeah, the upside, yeah. So doubt has the power to protect us, just as it has the power to derail us and hold us back. And it how has the power to protect us by asking us to take a take a pause, take a moment, kind of look around and say, am I doing this in the way that will serve me best or serve others best? Am I doing this, whatever this can be anything? Am I doing this for the reasons for the right reasons, meaning the reasons that connect with my own passion and purpose? Am I missing something that would enable me to step into this work with greater joy and attention and you know toward whatever outcome I want? So doubt can be a very healthy form of pause. And, you know, a great analogy is, you know, before a surgeon, you know, cuts into a patient with the knife, they may well consult another physician, consult a chart, take a breath, look at a record again, look at something, look at an x-ray, who knows, right? Point being that they're taking that pause to make sure am I proceeding in the best way and in the right way that's going to, you know, do no harm and be beneficial. So doubt has the power to power to protect us. And there are things that we should say no to because they're in fact going to hurt us and not help us. And you can sometimes we can be doubtful about those things because this is that gut check, right? It all ties together. And your gut is saying, I don't know, I don't know about this one. And you have to really, really listen deeply and honestly and figure out whether is that the good doubt or the or the nasty doubt, right? And you know, it get it gets into really knowing yourself. And let me just say that this ties into one other thing that's so important and it's it's all of a piece, really. And that is, you know, if you give yourself permission to try, you give yourself permission to take chances, you give yourself permission to try or start something new, something you haven't done before, then you're gonna be able to walk with your doubt and go forward because you are giving you are giving yourself permission to feel that sense of discomfort and yet step into the excitement. But once in a while, you know, there's something on offer or something that we might be asked to do. Let's take an example. Suppose you're not an experienced public speaker and and that very next day someone invites you to do a TED TED talk or TEDx talk or something. Well, you're not you're not quite ready. You know, you're not, I mean, you may say, wow, that's great, but if you need me to do this tomorrow, I'm not there. I'm not ready to, I'm not ready to do this. This isn't where I am yet, kind of in my own journey. So I'm gonna say no now and I'm gonna come back to this. And that might be the absolute right best decision for you because you're not ready to speak for 10 or 15 minutes without notes in an incredibly compelling, truthful, authentic way. You're not, that's not who you are in that moment. So you say no, that's good. There's doubt working for you. Suppose you've been prepping and prepping and prepping, and you know, you've been doing this kind of work all and someone gives you that opportunity and you still say no, really, really need to ask yourself, did you just deny yourself permission to do something you were truly ready to do? So we we have to interrogate ourselves deeply to figure these things out. That was a long answer.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

No, I I totally get it, and it makes sense, and it reminds me so much of oh, the two types of fear that Tara Moore talks about. Have you read her book? It's I have nothing. I think you like it. I think you'd like it. But she talks about two types of fear, and one is a contraction type of fear, and one is a fear of ex of expansion. Right. And so it's it's becoming kind of self-aware enough to know uh am I still am I shrinking away from an opportunity that I really want because I'm afraid of it? Or is this just not really the right thing for me? Right. And it's not, you know, and and I it's testing my boundaries in a way that's bringing up a red flag for me, maybe. So all of that to say that we're going to have doubts, right? We're hardwired to have them. It's part of a protective mechanism within us. So better to learn to work with them than pretend like they don't exist. That is one of the big messages that I got out of your book. So, in that vein of working with doubt, how can you use it? I really like what what one of the analogies you had in the book. It's that the knife of doubt is rubber. And I liked that, you know, in certain instances. So thinking of that, that it's it doesn't always mean no, it doesn't always mean you should not. How can you learn to dance with it and use it to your advantage?

SPEAKER_00 20:32

I think that it has to do in part with how you navigate and negotiate your way around creative risk. So we have to learn how to take healthy risks. Uh, and so for me, that means I will never budgie jump off a bridge. That's for me, that is not a healthy risk. I'm just, this is not going to be my thing. But a healthy risk for me is submitting a novel for for publication and being willing to accept the rejection because the healthy side of that risk is that I am putting my work out there and I'm I'm ready for the world to try and you know meet me on terms. And so we have to be able to both negotiate and sometimes renegotiate our relationship to risk in the sense of being ready to get a no from the world or from the universe, being ready to take rejection in and still go forward. And we have to be willing to take those chances and tell ourselves in advance, I am willing to take these chances.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

I love how your book says that there's many stories inside of you. Doubt is just one of them.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah, and I mean huge fan.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Quoting me, it's great.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Oh, I know. Well, I I mean literally, like I'm a huge fan of this book. Like I really appreciate it. And I I always love, you know, the saying that our feelings are not necessarily factual. They deserve to be understood and they give us information. But But, you know, making a decision without regard to like what's really underneath it, underneath those feelings, you know, is in the best service to usually to me. Not to say you shouldn't trust your gut, but it's that pausing before you make the first cut. Okay. And so when you were talking about how to navigate doubt and how to think about utilizing it, one of the tools in your book is the yes and. Could you talk about that a little bit? Because I thought that was very powerful.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

I think it's coming out of what we're talking about, which is giving yourself permission to put yourself out in the world in ways you have not done before. And whatever comes back to you, you work with it. You may get a no, you may get something discouraging, you may get absolute silence, which happens to a lot of us these days. And that that doesn't mean that that you're being uh turned down or refuted in any definitive way. This is all fluid. So we you can almost start to look at everything, if you want to, as kind of a yes and in the sense of, well, I explored an avenue that did not work out for me, but there's another avenue over here that might be a better fit. Anyway, I'm going to go in this direction. You know, for in writing, so often, so often, a lot of the rejection that we get is because we're not the right match. Our material, our voice, our sensibility, our format, our genre is not the right match for the thing we think we want. And so you get a no and you take it personally, and actually, that's not what the universe is telling you. The universe is telling you you haven't found the right fit yet. This isn't your fit. And so it's always this ongoing exploration, and there's always a yes waiting for you out there. So I think, I mean, that's part of what that's part of what that's about, which maybe is a very roundabout kind of kind of response. But this is all mindset. It's all how we think about ourselves and how we think about ourselves as actors in the world, and how we, you know, as we can only control our responses. We can't control what happens. So I think there's a lot of that that has to go on in our heads to sort of to keep going and keep creating and keep putting things out there and not feel defeated.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yeah, well, 100%. And what I loved about the yes and, like, yeah, I'm writing a young adult suspense novel, and I've never done that before, and I can't see the damn climax, and I don't know how this thing is gonna end.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yes, and I'm gonna do it anyway. Exactly. I'm gonna do it anyway. That is that is such a big that's right, and all of a piece, you know, and you send out your short story and it's turned down by four people, and you send it out again because I'm gonna do it anyway, because I believe in this work. And I mean, that happened to me fairly recently, like three no's on a short story, and then the fourth one's like, we love this, we're publishing it. Well, what I mean, I didn't change, I didn't change here. This is so important. You didn't change in that time, right? You were rejected, rejected, rejected. Oh, well, I'm a bad writer, I can't do this. The fourth person alone says we love it. Like, oh, I guess I'm a good writer. No, you are all you are the same all the way through. It's that the universe came to you with these different messages, and you just have to take those in, be you, still be you, believe in yourself, be true to yourself, do your best work, and you know, keep looking for the right fit. And it's just so easy to get discouraged and stop. It believe me, I've been on that precipice so many times. But yes, this is part of the yes and it's like you could almost convince yourself that everything is a everything out there is a yes and for you. It's not a no.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

I love that. And I also love how you touch on like, you know, it's uh what do you say? The remission is possible, recurrence is definite, or something. It's something like that. When it comes to doubt, it's never you're never gonna not have it, I believe. I will never not deal with doubt. I will, and and and there's a piece of that that's healthy that means that I'm not a complete narcissist. Right, right. That means that you know, that I have a system of checks and balances and that I'm just a human. I'm just a human being, and I am not a robot, and that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

So exactly, and I always do say we cannot banish doubt. I mean, I think these these feel good headlines like how to overcome all your doubts and get get self-confident. It's just overstating things. You're not going to overcome these things, but we are going to cope with them and we can cope with them better than we have in the past by really, really kind of listening to these voices. And one of the things I like to remind people is you can change the channel in your head. So the negative voices will win out if you let them, because they're very loud and very insistent. I mean, the villain is always the most fun character in the piece, right? And so, I mean, Corella de Ville is like the best thing, you know, that there is in 101 Dalmatians, right? So, uh, and Maleficent is the best thing in Snow White. I mean, the villains are great, right? So you've got villains living in your head, but they are not the only voices you have hero voices to that come from your past and what you've done and what you've accomplished and how you've grown and how you've changed and what you've overcome. And so we need to listen to those voices and just dial down the other ones. They don't go away, but but it's not the only, it's not the only voice that we should be listening to.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Yeah. And when you have those moments when the I call it the shitty committee, but the voices of the villains, the committee of villains, the shitty committee.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

When those voices are running through your mind, having a tool like your book is something that you can reach for to remind yourself of what is true, not just how you're feeling. So let's transition and just talk a little bit about your own writing life. So when you look back over your own writing life, what did your self-doubt look like for you initially? And how has it changed? Or has it?

SPEAKER_00 28:13

I I have been exploring that a lot lately because I've I realized I had to come to terms more specifically with my own lived doubt and really be in touch with that. And I I dredged up a whole bunch of memories, and then I saw, and then I saw the through line, and I was like, oh, I see that now. I get it, I get it, I see, I see what's been going on here. So I have this incredibly indelible memory that is decades old. I was about 23 and I was visiting a friend from college who had a roommate who was enrolled in film school. This was out in Hollywood, and I'd never seen something like a screenplay or anything like that. And this guy, I got to chatting with the my my friend's roommate, and he let me try my hand at working out a scene. This is back in the day when there was only this thing called a typewriter. That's how old I am. So that's how that's how long ago this was. So we had this, he had the scene rolled in this typewriter, and he let me sit down and he told me what to where the scene was going, whatever. And I sat down, and for the first time in my life, I'm like writing dialogue for a purpose in a scene to make something happen. And I something in me physically went nuts. I was flooded with adrenaline. I mean, shaking with adrenaline. I was just overwhelmed with this physical sensation of adrenaline and dorphins. I don't know what the chemicals were, but they were something was happening. And I couldn't read that moment in my life the way I read it now. That moment was telling me, you need to do this. This is something you need to be doing. Your entire physical body is telling you you need to be doing this. And I came away from that, and the guy didn't, you know, tell me that I'd written this scene of genius or anything. And I'm and so immediately I'm like, oh, well, you know, okay, I did I don't know what this was, but this is nothing. I can't do this, whatever this is, I can't do this. So I go back home and I try to forget it. And I'm telling you this literally over 40 years later, and I never forgot it. That was one, I won't bore you with several more examples. That was one of several examples where my heart, my soul was telling me who I probably really was and needed to be. And I denied it and denied it and denied it. And I went in other directions and I wouldn't listen. And honestly, probably not until I was in my 50s and I started writing plays and I left floodgates open. Took me a really long time because the tape in my head was this isn't for you, this is for those really cool, interesting, creative, daring people out there. That's not you. You just have to have a job and pay your rent. And I feel terrible for that younger version of me for not being able to make that connection. And it's a very real moment for me, and it wasn't the only one. I had to play that, live that story over many times.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

I get it. I really, really, really get it.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

I literally have tears in my eyes. I can't tell this without having tears in my eyes.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

I have a similar kind of experience, actually. I remember the moment that I you know, in retrospect, I remember the moment where my creativity was like stepped on hard. And then I remember several moments where and I won't bore you with them either, the details of those, but just several moments where I made a decision and I knew I was consciously denying myself what was right for me because I didn't think I was good enough for it. And those are, I mean, just a simple, you know, take a creative writing class versus taking the economics class. You know, this and that. I totally get it. And I did that for years, for years, and I wound up with degrees like in economics and in medicine, and I did so many I should do's. Yeah, I should do this, I should be this, and by being doing these things, I then become acceptable, and that's what I needed for myself. And you know, the result was that my insides were a mess. And eventually in those insides, it also became a mess on the outside, and then I had to go fix the whole boat.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Stacy, you know, this this so resonates because even though I went on to jobs that that had a writing component to them, like in other words, I couldn't have done economics or medicine, it resonates so deeply because it's at the at our root is it's just self-denial of massive proportions. And it's exacerbated by living in a culture that does not want us to go down that other path, the path that doesn't perhaps pay well, the path that doesn't come with title, prestige, promotions, recognizable markers of success, the path does that doesn't your parents go, oh, you know, I'm so proud of you for you know graduating from you know getting your MBA. Like it the culture doesn't help us. And so we're dying on the inside, and that happened to me as well. I mean, I think I was probably close to an official nervous breakdown. You can interpret that any way you want. I think I was very close. And I just was like, if I don't change, I'm afraid of what's going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Like I have to, you know, and you know, if we can save ourselves, we do, you know, and it's I call that a moment of desperation, of true, true desperation where I finally became willing to listen to what was going on inside of me. And then I had to get go get help to like sort all that shit out. But eventually I came to the place where I believe that my voice is unique and creative, and is and so is yours, and so is the next and the others, like anybody else, and we, you know, and it's important to share our stories because that's how we create empathy and compassion, and you know, how we spread hope in the world is through hearing other people's stories. And if we have no hope, we have nothing to me. That's so that went deep. Thank you. And and I just thank you for your vulnerability and your honesty and your compassion. And even though, right, even though we went through shit, right? You went through shit, I went through shit. Look at the result when you're willing to, you know, I don't know, like when you're willing to walk through it, we get beautiful books like what's like what you've put in the world, and and podcasts like this that are willing to, you know, share the shitty side of things and not just talk about the success, but like the rocky road that comes with being empowered. So okay, so we're gonna dive back to the last wrap-up question. Okay, so what would you say have been some of the most helpful resources for you to persevere with your writing when things get hard?

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Resources to persevere with my writing when things get hard. You know, here's if if we haven't done enough confessing, I'm going to come out with another really big one. Resources to me conjures up the 10,000 books of about writing and craft and this and that, but I don't read any of them. And and I don't because I don't want to fill my head, I don't have room to rent out to more voices. I got enough voices in there. They talk to me at night, they don't let me fall asleep. So I got a lot going on in there. So for me, resources really comes down to how I deploy my inner resources. When I'm writing, first of all, I take ideas and inspiration from the real world all the time, from news, from an experience in a room with people, from a what-if question that pops up to me, from reading something else that sparks, just sets a spark off in me about wow, this this gets me thinking about X. And so those are resources that I really dive into and run with. But for me, it's really about the inner resources. It's what do I really, really, really want to say? How do I want to say it? How is it making me feel? Is this bringing me joy to work on this? Do I really want to do this or am I responding to something completely outside of myself that's you know, artificially driving me forward? So I just try and check in with my own gut on and make sure that I'm writing from the inside out and not from the outside in. And that's probably not an answer to your question, but it's my it's the way I answer.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

I love that answer. I love, I love that answer. So that I'm say that again. I'm writing from the inside out.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Outside out, not from the outside in.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

I really love that. And that's something that I'll carry with me. And yeah, yeah. I wow, thank you. I can't thank you enough for your time and your generosity of spirit and your expertise. All right, Amy, where can listeners find you and your fabulous book, Wrangling the Doubt Monster?

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Wrangling the Doubt Monster is available really wherever books are sold or can be ordered. And I love when folks come to my website, amirites.live, A-M-Y-W-R-I-T-E-S.live. Check me out, check out my other books, check out my book coaching, and have a fun moment there. And that's that's pretty much the best place to go.

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. And I can't wait for the rest of the writing world to enjoy your book as much as I have. Thank you, Stacy. It's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.