Just Write: Find the Confidence to Write More

Want to write more? Writing more helps you to achieve your writing goals, whatever they may be.

Perhaps you want to:

* Write something every day;

* Write more often;

* Write a book; or

* Turn writing into a full-time career.

Find the confidence to write

My writing students cite many reasons for not writing more, most of which boil down to a lack of confidence, which comes from… yes, you guessed it… not writing enough.

This begs the question: how do you write more when you don’t have the confidence to do it?

Here are two easy tips which will help:

1. Have fun with your writing: give yourself the freedom to write junk

Your writing is not a life or death issue, but somehow you feel that it is. This is because when you write, you access your right brain, your creative side. One of the most interesting effects of switching to right brain mode is that it makes you anxious and even depressed.

A few years ago a fascinating TV show, “Left Brain Right Brain”.

talked about brain lateralization. Here’s a quote: “right brained people are much faster at recalling memories of negative events. They’re also more prone to depression.”

So creative types – writers, artists, actors – who use their right brain constantly tend to be less optimistic, and more prone to depression.

If you understand this about how your brain functions, that it can make you feel depressed about your writing, and that this is simply the way your brain works (it’s just a feeling, not a fact), it will help to make you more relaxed.

You will give yourself the freedom to write junk, because in a slightly anxious state you’re in no state to judge your own writing; just allow yourself to write.

Don’t write and edit at the same time.

(Your writing will turn out to be much better than you expect, when you read it on another day, when you’re not in creative mode.)

2. Schedule your writing, and train yourself to make writing a habit

As a writer, you write. So your first goal as a writer is to make the act of writing a habit. Nothing more, nothing less.

Here’s how do you do it: slot writing into your calendar. It’s easiest to write first, before your day begins. So set your alarm half an hour earlier, and in that half hour daily, just WRITE.

Write anything at all. It will take you around three weeks to train yourself to write every day for half an hour, without expectation, just creating.

Once you stop beating up on yourself when you write, and allow yourself to write junk, and train yourself to write on a schedule, you’ll write more.

The fact that you’re writing will give you confidence. And with confidence you’ll write more – it will happen naturally as your confidence in your writing grows. Try it.

Recession-proof your freelance writing career

“Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process” gives you all the tools you need for a thriving writing career, no matter what the economic climate.

Three weeks after completing the class one student wrote:

“Thanks Angela, for all your help and advice in class. I’m quitting my job next week. I printed out my letter of resignation tonight after landing a contract writing job that will pay me more for three months part-time work than I earned in from my day job in the whole of 2007! You were right – the great gigs are out there, and now I’ve got the skills to land them. Your class opened my eyes. Bless you…”

“Write More And Make More Money From Your Writing: Develop A Fast, Fun Productive Writing Process” shows you how to thrive as a freelance writer. Would you like to write five times more than you’re writing now, and sell to higher-paying markets? Take the class.