Please sir, may I have some more (confidence)?

This post is going to involve a lot of pictures and quotes… because I am CONFIDENT that other people have expressed things about confidence way better than I ever could. It also contains a ridiculous amount of ALL CAPS. ;)

I don’t know about you guys but I spend MANY a day doing the exact thing that Cindy talked about here last week. Making excuses that aren’t true (“I don’t really want this anyway”) to help myself feel better about the fact that I’m letting FEAR of the unknown block my path to SUCCESS.

And today I want to talk about two types of confidence: internal confidence and external confidence. Having a healthy dose of both will save not only your writing but pretty much everything you do. Please know that, for me, almost every part of this post falls into the “SO MUCH easier said than done” category. 

INTERNAL CONFIDENCE

Some days you just wake up feeling like it’s not going to be ok. Some days you start out feeling like it’s  all going to go your way, but then you start writing, and the words just aren’t coming and you dissolve into a puddle of “I SUCK AT THIS”.  The only way to battle both of these moods? Internal confidence; you must have confidence in you. 

Whether you believe it or not, THESE are the times you have to look at yourself in a mirror and tell yourself that YOU ARE A ROCKSTAR! That feeling like all the world is little black rainclouds? IT’S A RAINBOW WAITING TO HAPPEN! That feeling like you suck? IT DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT’S TALKING ABOUT. But…? NO BUTS, YOU. ARE. A. ROCKSTAR. 

EXTERNAL CONFIDENCE

Then there are the days when you take your writing out of the cave and into the world. And this type of confidence is a little bit trickier because you need to project that you believe in your ability to succeed without SHOVING your belief in other people’s faces.

Whether you are showing your work to critique partners, querying agents, or sending a new draft to your editor, it is important to make sure they know that you are proud of what you are sending out it into this world. Do you need people to believe you think it is ABSOLUTELY PERFECT? Of course not, and that’s ok because in all likelihood it’s not. But hopefully it is YOUR best and if it is you should be proud and own it! 

So let’s make a pact! To tell ourselves we are AWESOME, to remind each other we are AWESOME, and to show the world just how AWESOME we really are!

Now I want to hear from you! What is the most amazing thing you've done in your writing this week? this month? this year? What is the thing you are BEST at? What do you do to combat anti-confidence attacks?