This post was originally published on Tumblr on November 9, 2024.

It has become in vogue for writers to tear themselves down before anyone gets the chance. Or maybe it’s always been in vogue and I didn’t notice. Nevertheless, it concerns me.

Having low self-esteem is the easiest way to fail. Why?

The way you react to your work tells other people how to feel about it.

If you are putting down your writing, no one is going to read it. You have told them that it is bad and not worth their time. Maybe that’s fine if you don’t want people to read it, but if that’s true, why are you talking about it to anyone in the first place?

So, should you want a chance at success, you need to break this bad habit when it comes to your writing – and, I’d argue, everything else too.

As always, this is only my opinion, but I will say that I used to have absolutely abysmal self-esteem (and have the self-harm scars to prove it) and I still managed to get it done.

Maybe what I say will help you. Maybe it won’t. Still, it’s worth a shot, right?

Stop making excuses for your bad self-esteem.

Let’s say that you, like me, had a rough start to life. Maybe you were the victim of domestic abuse, or were raised in an unloving home. That helps to explain why you may have bad self-esteem.

BUT. It does not excuse you refusing to take control of your life and work on it.

Again. It’s an explanation, not an excuse.

No matter your spiritual beliefs, we can all agree that you have one singular shot at this specific life. As such, it is our right and privilege to take control of it as much as we can. That starts from within.

Acknowledge that no one cares as much about your writing as you do.

This is brutal but excruciatingly essential. No one will ever care about your writing as much as you do.

You can’t make them care as much because they weren’t there, hour by hour, building this world along with you. They see the first draft, or the second one, or the published copy, but they don’t see all the blood, sweat, and tears, because they can’t.

When you stop wringing peoples’ necks to get a reaction from them, you paradoxically may find that they respond better because they don’t feel forced to play nice.

I know that everyone who reads 9 Years Yearning will walk away from it going “huh, that was nice” or “well, that was sort of a waste of time,” and that’s it.

They’re not going to be obsessed with it. Knowing that this is just a tiny slice of their life makes me less disappointed when they’re not as excited as I’d like.

Recognize that all you can control are your own thoughts.

We cannot make other people love us or our writing. We can’t make people care about it, nor can we control how they react.

But we can control the way we think about ourselves and our circumstances. We can consciously choose to be kind to ourselves, to support our own endeavors, and to resist the urge to tear ourselves down.

All you have in this life is yourself. Why would you want to be your own enemy?

Your relationship with yourself is the only one that is guaranteed to last until death. As such, it behooves you to treat this relationship as even more special than any you may share with someone else.

See your writing as separate from yourself.

This is perhaps the hardest thing to master. After all, we spend so much time with our own writing that we start to see it as indistinguishable from ourselves; we pour so much of our life and feelings into these characters.

But you are not your writing, and your writing is not you. It is something you created, yes, but it says nothing about your worth as a person if you don’t make the best piece ever.

When you recognize this, critique does not feel like personal attack. You can look at it objectively and recognize other peoples’ opinions as good feedback about the project, but not necessarily feedback about you.

Ruthlessly engage in positive self-talk.

This sounds like toxic positivity, but I promise it’s not.

You don’t have to be happy all the time. You’re entitled to have a shitty day or feel bad about yourself sometimes. Things can suck, and you’re entitled to acknowledge that they suck.

The thing is that you can respond to bad situations without immediately tearing yourself apart. Again, why turn on yourself when the world is more than happy to beat you up instead? You are your own ally and advocate.

I have starting doing this little trick that’s actually super stupid, but it helps a lot.

When I’m at home and I walk into a room, I’ll say something like “Look, it’s me! Everyone claps, yay!”

Dumb? Sure. But it’s a psychological reminder to myself that I am valuable, that people are happy to see me, and that even if they aren’t, I’m fucking happy to see me.

I have struggled with agoraphobia before, but I started to beat it when I mentally told myself I was going to have a good time wherever I went. I said to myself, “You’re going to do great! You’re going to meet nice people and have fun.”

Sometimes I don’t have fun. So I tell myself, “That’s alright. There’s always next time. Not everyone will like you. That’s okay.”

It feels a little cheesy at first, but soon enough it becomes second nature. I even psych up the horses when I’m horseback riding by telling my mount, “we’re going to have such a great lesson today and work really hard!” If they start getting disobedient or restless, I verbally tell them everything’s okay and that we can keep going. My instructor calls it “nonchalance,” but it’s actually calculated positive thinking.

And if you’re worried you’ll start sounding self-absorbed, that’s a good sign that you won’t. Self-absorbed people don’t question themselves like that. You’re doing fine.

Do not rely on external validation.

Of course, we all love to hear someone else praise us. When you have strong self-esteem, though, this is a “nice to have” rather than a requirement.

Writing on a consistent basis is about intrinsic motivation – “I want to write this for myself” – rather than extrinsic motivation like praise, money, etc.

If no one ever picked up a single one of the Eirenic Verses, I’d still write all 10. It would suck to see zero sales, but it wouldn’t stop me. I’m committed to this project and will see it through no matter what.

In fact, my greatest fear in life is dying before I finish the series; it’s the only thing that keeps me up at night.

Consider your motivations for continuing to write. Is it exploring the dark side of human nature? Sharing something about your life? Educating others? Offering comfort? Having multiple motivations is good, but the foremost one should be something for you and you alone.

This motivation is what will keep you going even when you don’t get positive reactions from others.

At the same time, please don’t share your work with anyone if you’re going to be utterly destroyed by any critique. It’s just going to make it harder for you to continue growing as a writer because you are so demoralized.

Celebrate yourself first.

R/selfpublish is full of people saying the same thing over and over again: “I finished my first draft! I hit publish! I did this! I did that!”

The problem is that people get really burnt out of those posts and stop responding to them with a “good job.” You’re barking up the wrong tree if you’re seeking validation there because everyone else is trying to finish their book or self-publish or whatever.

We can say that everyone should uplift everyone else until we all asphyxiate, but it doesn’t mean it will happen. As such, please stop relying on strangers on the internet to hype you up, because it may not happen, and then where are you?

So celebrate yourself, by yourself, for yourself. Do it quietly. Buy yourself a cake. Have a bubble bath. Dance around your room. Write in your journal how proud you are. You’re not expecting anything from anyone but you, so you can be guaranteed a positive outcome that will build your happiness.

Separate marketing from validation.

I had this problem at first; I wanted people to get super hyped and was disappointed when they weren’t.

But marketing is marketing. It’s just a way to tell people about your work. Coming at it from a place of accomplishment is wonderful, but again, no one is going to care as much as you do, and you can’t expect to get strong feedback from your marketing.

Recognize that not everyone is responding in good faith.

It is a sad fact that a lot of people have terrible self-esteem, but they don’t know how to build it in a positive way. As such, they spend their time tearing others down to their level rather than using someone else’s successes as inspiration to improve.

This is especially true in the writing community. Others will fiercely oppose you not because you’re actually an unskilled writer, but because they are. You can see this if you take a gander at their work. The youngest, most inexperienced writers are often the ones who are giving the most vicious yet baseless critiques.

You cannot allow other peoples’ reactions to your writing to damage your self-esteem. Recognize that everyone else has got their own stuff going on, and a lot of the time, someone’s response is more about how they feel about themselves than about you.

So that’s about it. I hope this super long post was helpful to you.