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My Muse visited me this morning with a completely new plan. She wanted me to write a short story as a different challenge for myself since finishing the first draft of my novel. I spent the morning going against her and telling her “no way!” After much debating back and forth, I am pretty sure she swore at me—can a Muse do that?
I decided it was in my best interest to listen to her, so I sat down and wrote my very first short story. I finished within an hour, and it is sitting on my lap as I type this. Is it the best short story ever written? No, and it needs a lot of well-deserved attention, which it will get. However, this short story is a symbol of my getting past the limitations that I have set upon myself somewhere along the way. Statements like “I am horrible at short stories!” or “I could never write a short story!” crushed my ability as a writer to listen to my Muse, and create work that captures the essence of who I am as a person.
I am sharing this, because I know that I am not alone with this type of negative self-talk. So stop it! Start believing in your writing abilities. Try something that you have been telling yourself you would never be able to do. You might actually find out that you are capable of a whole lot more than you have ever imagined!
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3 comments:
I can so relate to this post; the same thing happened to me after finishing my first draft on my recent wip. I've sent the story off to a magazine but I'm not building my hopes up!
CJ xx
I've got two voices in me, one says, "Hey, that's not too bad!" in a highly surprised voice. The other voice says, "Who are you kidding? Press Delete before anyone reads it." It is so difficult to believe in ourselves with all the negative information we read day after day. But I think, we can only improve our writing -at least I hope so.
@Crystal I understand. This is my first short story and I'll be submitting it this week! It's about believing and dreaming.... hard to decipher between the two sometimes.
@Sarah I think I have those same voices! Maybe your voices can have a playdate with my voices sometime :) I often read some of my work and think, "wow am I 10?" Other times I think "wow, a 10 year old could write better than this".. and then on good days I think "wow, that wasn't so bad" We need to control these voices! :)
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