U is for Undervalue

This year for the A-Z Challenge, I'm attempting to act like I know what I'm talking about and offering advice about writing.  Let's see how I do!

Also, don't forget to stop by the Parallels blog to see more posts about the upcoming anthology, which will be available on May 3rd!

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If there’s anything that can kill your creativity more thoroughly than undervaluing yourself and the work you do, I’ve yet to see it.  Plenty of people operate under the assumption that writing is something easy and that anyone can just sit down and do, but they’re wrong.  They’re clearly not writers.  If they were, they’d know better.

Don’t let these naysayers get to you.  When you’re struggling to get the words out and you hear those negative thoughts in your head, they can douse the creative flame that keeps you going.

I think I, and many others, feel like impostors, from time to time.  There’s even something known as Impostor Syndrome.  Just look it up.   It’s easy to feel like the things we accomplish were flukes or accidents, and we fear someone will eventually see through us.  When we do this, we undervalue our own abilities and creations.  This is quite self-defeating.

There’s no easy solution to this quandary.  We won’t always feel good enough, but it might help to remind ourselves that other authors have struggled with feelings of inadequacy too.  Think of how sad it would be if they had allowed those feelings to silence them.