Our Roller Coaster Confidence

This past year has been a crazy year of ups and downs for me. Releasing a debut novel will do that to you! My guest today, Linda Legters describes how I often feel as a writer, and gives some great advice. She is also joining the debut novelist club; CONNECTED UNDERNEATH will be available from Lethe Press this April.

Our Roller Coaster Confidence

By Linda Legters

Was it just yesterday that I wrote that good chapter? Had that clear insight? Why does everything I do sound so awful this morning? Will I ever write a good sentence again?

I’ve never met a writer who hasn’t experienced doubt. Tired of the roller coaster, I decided to find ways to keep the down swings from turning into abandoned projects. Here’s how I steer clear of despair.

Recognize Patterns. I’ll have an off day or two every couple of weeks, while a fellow writer experiences one week of doubt every two months. For those of us who write regularly, confidence swings occur in fairly predictable patterns. Try keeping track. These down days are miserable, but recognizing the patterns allows you to get through them with more patience.

Embrace the inner critic. My inner critic keeps me honest and from being too easily satisfied.  These are good things. When that cruel critic surfaces, I’ve found that it’s best to listen – is there any truth? – before sending it on its way.

Take a break. Not writing for a day or even a few days doesn’t mean I’ll never write again. It’s not that I CAN’T write, just that I can’t write NOW.  I simply need to reboot and refresh. I don’t think it makes sense to beat ourselves up over wasting precious writing time when we could be putting final touches on a piece that is going well, or concentrating on marketing.  Although not producing new work, it’s still time well-spent.

Do something else. Something else completely. Writers often take walks to jog creativity, and this works when I need to find a solution to a manuscript problem, but not when I need to get over a confidence bump. Instead, I’ll do something completely different but that’s also creative, such as painting, or taking photographs. Soon, I’m writing again. I have no scientific explanation, but exploring other realms of creativity seems to access different brain cells, allowing me to make connections that expand into my writing. In miraculous ways, art feeds art.

Here’s to good writing days!

Linda Legters was born in the far western reaches of New York State. She earned her B.A. from the University of New Hampshire and her MFA from Vermont College. She teaches writing and literature at Norwalk Community College and at the Fairfield County Writers’ Studio. Her short stories are about people from across the social spectrum and have appeared in numerous literary journals. She is passionate about art and music in addition to literature. Linda lives in Connecticut and is working on her next novel.

CONNECTED UNDERNEATH by Linda Legters

Madena, upstate New York. Like any other small town, everybody keeps an eye on everybody else’s business without recognizing the secrets that connect them. The wheelchair-bound Celeste conjures up lives from what she sees and thinks she sees while peering through binoculars from her kitchen fan vent. Fifteen-year old Persephone trades sex for tattoo sessions that get her high and help her forget her girlfriend doesn’t love her. Theo was the high-school bad boy who couldn’t have the respectable girl he adored from afar, but now, sitting behind the counter of the last video store in town, worries wretchedly about the restless daughter he never understood. Natalie, trying to grasp the last shreds of respectability, would do anything to forget the baby she gave up long ago, including betray her husband and son. Celeste, longing to connect, combines truth with fantasy, intervenes and interferes, finally understanding that things have gone terribly wrong and that she stands at the heart of disaster.

Connected Underneath is a lyrical, scalpel-keen dissection of the ties that bind and those that dissolve.