Creative Writing - 5 Tips To Increase Your Self Confidence In Writing Creatively

Having confidence in yourself as a writer can be the difference between writing freely and abundantly, boldly experimenting with many different techniques and styles, and, well, writing absolutely nothing.

So, if confidence in writing is so crucial, what can you do increase yours when you feel it’s less than overflowing?

Here are 5 Top Tips you can use today to boost your creative writing confidence to new levels:

1. Detach from the outcome. By expecting to produce a modern masterpiece of fiction or poetry each time you sit down to write, you place enormous and unrealistic pressure on yourself. The result? Even if you DO write something wonderful, it fails to live up to your expectation and you callously discard it, causing your already fragile confidence to weaken further.

Instead, write with complete detachment from the outcome. Tell yourself your aim is to write to experiment and to progress and develop yourself as a writer. Whether you produce a perfect end product is not important. Think journey not destination.

2. Start small and build. If your confidence is low, the worst thing you can do is take on a major new creative writing project that’s more ambitious than anything you’ve done before. Again, the pressure you put on yourself is huge, and your confidence is likely to take a further battering.

Instead, choose a small and manageable project to work on. It can be as simple as a 3 line haiku or a few paragraphs to describe someone you admire and find fascinating. Completing a number of small projects will enhance your confidence no end, rather than getting overwhelmed and stuck in something larger. Build up to more involved projects as your confidence grows.

3. Count your victories. Because you live with yourself every day, it’s very difficult to be objective about how creative you are. It’s all too easy to complain that you haven’t written ANYTHING in months and then upon looking a little closer realise you’ve written 17 entries in your journal, 5 poems, and 3 articles.

Post a “Writing Victories” page on your wall, or somewhere else prominent. Each time you do some writing or something towards writing, note it down, with the date on your victories chart. It can be a simple as “wrote an idea for a new character” or “spent an hour in local café observing people and making notes”, or “tidied and de-cluttered my writing area so I feel more motivated to write.” You’ll be amazed how much you do that you didn’t count before.

4. Remember to write to enjoy. When your confidence has taken a number of blows, the thought of writing anything starts to bring only negative associations. You feel anxious before you even begin. Obviously this isn’t conducive to writing confidently and freely.

Remind yourself why you write, and what you really enjoy about writing. Imagine you’re coming back to writing like a long lost lover, about to fall in love all over again. What enjoyment does writing give you that nothing else can? Once you’re back in touch with this, your confidence naturally increases because you know you’re writing for reasons very important to you.

5. Show up every day. The only way to write consistently and abundantly is to write regularly. And for this, writing should be a habit in your life on the same kind of essential level as eating, sleeping and breathing.

Set a time to write every day – make it a time of day that you find you’re most productive in writing. Then write for a minimum of 15 minutes at this same time every day. As your confidence builds, extend the amount of time to 20, 30, 60 minutes and beyond.

Use these 5 tips to increase your creative writing confidence today! Which tip will you choose to use first?

And to get your creative writing kick started right away, I invite you to get your FREE 5 part creative writing ecourse at http://www.YouAreACreativeWriter.com