<![CDATA[Alyssa B Colton Writing & Editing

How does someone develop confidence as a writer? And why is it even necessary?

Think of the difference between seeing someone speak with confidence and someone who doesn’t. While we are turned off by arrogance, confidence can help deliver a message by putting the emphasis on the message instead of the person. If a speaker is mumbling, fidgeting, apologizing, and speaking in a low voice, while we may have compassion for this person, it does not help in message – or story – delivery.

Lack of confidence can inhibit you from putting down even the first word. Lack of confidence can keep you from sharing your work, a necessary part of the writing process if you want to publish work you can be proud of.

So what do you do? It seems like a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but you build confidence by DOING. The doing then shows your brain you CAN do it.

Confidence comes from trying and failing and building resilience in order to keep trying, according to Kathy Kay and Claire Shipman in The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance –What Women Should Know:

Confidence “requires hard work, substantial risk, determined persistence, and sometimes bitter failure. Building it demands regular exposure to all these things. . . . Gaining confidence means getting outside your comfort zone, experiencing setbacks, and, with determination, picking yourself up again.”

So how to build that confidence muscle? Start with baby steps. First, practice writing in private in any way you can. Journal, write stories or record memories in a place where you can allow yourself to be terrible, to write the “shitty first draft,” as Anne Lamott says. Give yourself permission to be terrible. (You might also try one of these exercises.) Then you might find a class, workshop, or critique group to share your writing with. This can be scary. Take the time to find out if the facilitator is experienced and thoughtful about sharing critique; if it's a group of peers, research and decide on some ground rules. Getting feedback on your writing can be difficult. But know this: it will make you a better writer. And remember, it’s not personal. (You are not the poem.)

Once you have a decent short piece – an essay, story, poem, or article – find a way to share it. Perhaps post it on a blog or in social media for friends and followers. Making your work public in this relatively low-stakes way can be a good way to build that confidence and resilience.

You will likely worry what people will say. Or you might be disappointed when they don’t say anything at all. Know that people will have different reactions and responses. Whatever their response is IS NOT ABOUT YOU, even for very personal pieces. Consider, though, if any responses you get will help you be a better writer. Mostly, being a good writer is about clarity of message (as well as, of course, the substance of that message). Take what is helpful and ignore the rest.

Next, find a publication outlet that might consider it and start submitting. (Note that once you’ve posted it, even to a personal site, it might be ineligible for publication, so if this is your goal, do this first.) There’s no harm in shooting high, if the piece fits. If anything, it will help you weather rejection. Start collecting and being proud of those rejections. Rejection is a necessary part of being a writer. Eventually, you may need to find a smaller, more modest publication to submit to, and that’s ok too. Consider entering contests, too.

Growing confidence means having courage to take that first step, and continuing even when you fail or it seems hard. Trust that persisting, even in the face of self-doubt, can help you be a more confident writer.
More about confidence and writing in future posts!

What are some aspects of writing that make up a writer's "voice"?

(1) Word choice. What words we choose to use affect voice, whether you choose casual, more academic, slang, or some combination of these. The use of abstract and concrete words and foreign words can also apply here.
(2) Sentence structure. Do you tend to write long, winding, complex sentences or short, choppy ones? Do you like to use fragments? Do you use commas?

(3) Attitude and tone. These are also conveyed by the above elements. It might also mean if someone likes to use a lot of words that convey sound (yahoo!) or if they are sarcastic, humorous, serious, reflective, etc

(4) Content and context can also be part of what drives voice. Someone who writes long descriptions of nature might adopt a different voice than someone who describes the excitement of a match in a boxing ring.

Where we come from, how we were raised, our patterns of speech, the use of stories and metaphors, also influence voice, as well as gender and class.

One of the best explanations of “voice” is in Mary Pipher’s Writing to Change the World. She describes her own struggle to leave behind a voice where she was “committing the act of literature” and eventually finding a way to match her writing voice more with her speaking voice.

Since we usually speak more casually than we write – especially if we’ve been steeped in academic writing, as she was --this is one goal. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be.

Interested in learning more about voice, and how you can develop your own writer's voice? I'll be back tomorrow with some insight.

One of the cardinal rules of storytelling is: make it specific. Any time you use stories, specificity helps to translate ideas, which live on an abstract level, to the concrete.

So don’t be afraid to get real specific in your stories.

The trick though is not just using specifics to set a scene, describe a character, or illustrate an action. Good writers understand how to use the telling detail.

Telling details are those details that tell us more than just what’s on the surface.

Here are two examples of telling details.

"…the mother shrouded in a filthy ski jacket and tattered pants, draped over her child's closed casket."

The detail, Marion Roach Smith explains in her book about writing from life, relays the mother's grief, "stitched into the details about the jacket." (The word choice "shrouded" also echoes the death shroud, which further reinforces the point. )

Here's another example from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, where she introduces the character Nick:

"He's wearing the uniform . . . but his cap is titled at a jaunty angle and his sleeves are rolled to the elbow, showing his forearms, tanned but with a stipple of dark hairs. He has a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, which shows that he too has something he can trade on the black market."

The details - and the narrator's observation of the cigarette and what it means - hints that Nick may be predisposed to breaking the rules in this rigid society.

Don't worry too much about trying to find the telling detail in your first draft: often these become clearer as you get an understanding of your story's themes. But it's important to be aware of them. Next time you're reading a good book, look for examples of the telling details and see how they add to the story.

Once, not too longago,I was so upset that I drank half a bottle of wine and then sat on the floor crying. Fortunately, I had a friend nearby. I was feeling bad about something I should have done, that affected another friend’s life. My friend had shown forgiveness and understanding, and now I needed to show those things to myself.
If there’s onething being alive 52 years has taught me, it’s that pain doesn’t last forever, at least not at the sharp, almost-unable-to-breathe way it first hits.

That doesn’t of course mean it doesn’t come back.

And it doesn’t mean that it might still be there as dull aches that come up. Some moments, some days can be simply unbearable. And once you’ve been through enough of those moments, you know you just need to hang on and get through it, to just let it flow until it’s ready to release.

Like holding a crying baby.

Like hanging on tight on a roller coaster ride for one more heart-dropping descent or loop-de-loop.

If you just hang on and be patient, you’ll find yourself back with your feet on the ground. And you’ll look up at the people on the roller coaster ride, shrieking and think, I got through that, and look, there are other people who are going through it now, and in the end, while we all might survive it a little differently--some with a smile of exhilaration wanting another go, some with a grim face of “I did it,” and some will stalk away, deciding they never want to do THAT again.

Of course we don’t always have a choice about living through the pain. But we must just hang on, and trust that we’ll get through it.