E is for...Exceeds Expectations

Welcome back to the A-Z blogging challenge 2015! Hope you all had a lovely day off yesterday :).

Today's post is all about the letter E...

There are a lot of nice words that begins with the letter E. Excellent, exceptional, exemplary, exquisite, egotistical...oh wait.

As a writer, I don't think I've ever written something and then thought 'OMG, this chapter I've just written is EXQUISITE!' Hahahaha, no. It doesn't happen like that. At least, not for me.

But I'm here to tell you something...as a writer (and in everyday life, now that I think about it), I'm generally extremely self-conscious, have very little confidence, and I can be a nervous wreck. There are so many things that I agonise over when I'm writing - am I getting this character's description right? Am I telling rather than showing the reader this important piece of information? Is this character relatable? Is my villain actually a villain, or just a cartoon character with a twirly moustache? Will anyone actually read AND LIKE what I've written??

But here's the thing. You don't have to hate everything you've written.

Sometimes you're going to have days when you want to cry and chuck your computer/notepad in the bin. And other days, you're going to write something and think, 'y'know what? This isn't so bad. I can work with this.' And that's great! So often in life we're forced into thinking that we don't deserve X,Y & Z. We don't deserve to feel good about ourselves (why else would the gym/dieting industry be booming?). But you know what? Quite often, that's just a load of bull.

Suffering from extreme anxiety means I quite often hate what I've written. Or I like it for a while, but then I manage to convince myself it's actually terrible and I have no business being a writer. But that's just my own personal demon that I have to face. I face it everyday, and everyday I keep writing. I keep trying to improve on what I've written. I keep practicing and I keep going. And maybe, just maybe, at the end of the day I'll be able to sit back and think, 'this doesn't totally suck.'

So, what I'm trying to say is - it's okay to love your writing. Hell, if you didn't love and believe in you're writing, I very much doubt you'd be writing a novel or whatever in the first place. It's that belief, and that love for your world and your characters, that keeps you going. If you believe in what you're doing, your readers will too.

So the next time you write something that surprises you, or you manage to exceed your own expectations - go with it. Don't beat yourself up about it. Don't think you're a fake, or a sham. You're not. You're a writer - and you, more than anyone, need to believe in your own words.