On the Way to Confidence

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The year is more than six weeks gone and I am asking myself how my one word for the year is going. For those who are new to this site, this year I chose the word CONFIDENCE to guide me through this year. I don’t really feel like I exude confidence yet or anything. Maybe I never will. I don’t think of myself when I hear the word confident, it just isn’t who I am. But I am working on changing that, one step at a time. So since I have let six weeks of the year slip by, I am asking myself if I am doing things to make myself more confident and if so, what are they and how did they work.

I have read several books about gaining confidence this year. While I’m not sure any of them has exactly helped to boost my self-confidence, they have helped me to understand that having too much confidence can also be a bad thing.
So, let’s cut to the chase and talk about things I have done this year to show that I have confidence in myself, especially as a writer.

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I started a 7 Day Creative Writing Challenge hosted by Joe Bunting and The Write Practice on Monday, January 22, 2018. The goal for the seven days was to write one thousand words a day, every day for seven days. I managed to keep going and successfully wrote more than one thousand words a day for twenty-three days. Valentine’s Day was the one day I didn’t write. I did edit a piece to get it ready to submit. I also worked on blog maintenance issues and solved a few issues. I found that writing so consistently was draining me both mentally and physically. In addition to writing the one thousand words on the computer, I was also hand-writing, in cursive no less, a page a day in a composition notebook which I actually find more difficult than the thousand typed words. The handwritten page is my adaptation of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages as spelled out in her book, The Artist’s Way, where she recommends starting every morning as soon as you get out of bed with three pages of stream-of-conscious writing by hand in a journal. Because of my struggles with carpal tunnel, I have adapted the assignment to fit my abilities and writing just one page. In the past, I have always blown the assignment off because I knew I couldn’t do it physically. I figured I could just write on my computer instead, but she insists that it needs to be hand-written. I also have yet to write my page in the morning. I am not a morning person. I don’t see myself ever becoming a morning person and don’t think my mind would have much worth saying first thing in the morning. Baby steps, right?

So I have been writing more and more consistently. I have been submitting more pieces to contests and for possible publication in anthologies. The more I write with the intention to submit it, the more confident I get in my writing. I find I like shorter projects that I can finish sooner rather than later. The novels seem like a never-ending project to me and so I put them away for now in favor of the sense of completion and satisfaction I get from writing short stories, articles, and blog posts. I might not have realized this if not for me finding the Five Minute Friday linkup hosted by Kate Motaung every week. The expectation is that she provides a one-word prompt and we write for five minutes then publish with only minimal editing. My thought is that it must be edited a bit more to be included on my blog, so that is my take on her challenge. Have you noticed I feel I must do everything MY way? I make adaptations to things when I don’t feel comfortable and confident with them the way they are. It takes a certain about of courage and confidence to stand up for myself and do things my way. In the past, I wouldn’t have done them at all and would have felt like a failure for not being able to participate on the basis of someone else’s rules.

I submitted to an essay contest early in the year. I have also submitted writings based on prompts twice and wrote a piece to submit to a well-known anthology. I am valuing my writing enough to release it into the world to other places besides my own little blog. I am also choosing places where I could potentially earn income from my writing. The plan is to write, edit, submit and repeat consistently. I don’t submit then wait around for some contest to end before I find out whether I should go on writing. The value of my writing is not based on the opinion and acceptance of others. The more I write, the easier it will get and the better it will get. Eventually, it will be published or win prizes, but life is too short to wait around to see what others have to say about my writing. I need to keep writing and finding new places to submit my work. I am finding that I write better when given a direction.
Oddly enough having the one word prompts on Fridays challenges me. Sometimes I get the word and wonder what Kate was thinking to choose that word and better yet what the heck was I going to say about that word? How could I write even for five minutes on it? Well, you know what? Sometimes the words I think will be the hardest force me to think and sometimes it takes me a day or two to figure out how I will respond to her one-word prompt, but this is often when the writing just flows from me and takes over. Some of my best writing has come about as a result of Kate Motaung and her Five Minute Friday challenges.

So, yes, I am gaining in confidence, slowly and surely. I will continue to find things to read and do to challenge myself to step out of my comfort zone and try things that my past self would never have had the confidence to try. If you have never tried having one word to guide your year, I highly recommend giving it a try. Last year I asked myself constantly, is this what a FEARLESS person would do? Now I am asking if things are what someone with CONFIDENCE would do. Give it a try, you just might like the new you that emerges by the end of the year.

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