Celebrate Your Strengths
There are some things I’m good at, some things I learn and some things I’m never gonna master (ahem, marketing).
When it comes to writing—and publishing and selling—that covers a lot of ground. I think I’m good at character development and worldbuilding and dialogue. I’ve learned how to plot and write action sequences. I’m on a continual (and, it feels like a never-ending) learning curve about how to get the word out there about my writing.
Which means, like most of us, I fret about what I’m not good at; I worry about where I need to improve. That’s not a bad thing. I don’t want to get complacent—or worse, arrogant—to think I know everything about writing. But I’m realizing it’s coming at the expense of recognizing what I do excel at. We all excel at something, even if we’re learning new skills. So I’ve taken time to re-focus on my writing superpower: writing emotions. Diving into a character’s head. It’s what I love most about writing, so why not celebrate that I’m good at it? It’s easy to dismiss our accomplishments as hubris, but it’s not. In this writing world, which is so diverse and vast, we need to believe in ourselves and our own abilities. It’s hard, absolutely. But I challenge you: find one thing about your writing life that you feel you’re good at and cling to that.
Go ahead, celebrate your strengths. You deserve that.