Embracing Insecurity

The first question I ask my writing students is not why do you write but why don’t you?

Why don’t you write?

Their answers are variations on the same themes: ‘no time,’ ‘I’m worried I don’t have a story,’ ‘I’m scared people will think it’s rubbish,’ ‘I doubt I’ve got anything interesting to say …’

Pushing the old ‘no time’ chestnut to one side … that’s a whole other article … you will notice words like worried, scared, and doubt. How then do I get these would-be writers to put words on a page? How on earth do I get them to read those words aloud to their classmates?

Well, firstly, I have to get them to acknowledge their insecurities in a group setting and see those insecurities in a different way. And once they’ve answered the above question, they’ve already taken that step: voicing their worries aloud and realising that everyone else is worrying about the same things. The relief is palpable; the air changes.

I didn’t write. For years. I was too full of doubt. And then I did write, but I threw my work away. All of it. Why? Because nothing I wrote compared favourably to my favourite authors. My conclusion ran something like: my work isn’t as good as theirs, my work isn’t good at all, ergo, I’m not good. Needless to say, this kind of insecurity was not helpful.

I used to think the answer lay in getting rid of insecurity and reaching a place where I was completely confident. Because being completely confident is possible, right? After all, here we are, in an internet world of bumper sticker philosophies and motivational poster-bite thingies which tell us to believe in ourselves, to be strong, to shine, to be different, to let our weirdness show … whatever. I have no problem with these slogans. In fact, I find their axe-to-crack-a-hazelnut approach a great antidote to my own personal brand of the heebie-jeebies. However, sometimes you feel insecure, you just do, and when that happens, those slogans can compound your insecurity by making you feel inadequate about feeling insecure in the first place. Sheesh! That’s not so helpful! But what can be helpful, to me at least, is to embrace my insecurity and use it … after all, the place of departure for any fiction writer should be doubt, shouldn't it? Authors explore, they ask without necessarily answering. If we are certain, the book will be very short indeed.

In class, the first thing I try and banish is the ‘my work is not good therefore I am not good’ equation and make a new one along the lines of ‘my work is not as good as I’d like it to be therefore I need to study and practise and see my fellow writers not as the frightening voice of criticism but as a valuable resource’. No writer comes to their first page and dashes off a masterpiece. Well, there might be a few, but they are a very small minority, probably can’t dance and I blow a raspberry in their general direction. For the rest of us, when faced with the blank page, the pressure to shine is the death of creativity. If you’re trying to shine, you’re not learning. If you’re trying to write littrutchur, you’re not thinking about your characters and how they see the world and why that makes them react at they do to what you have in store for them. You’re not wondering where they were when they told their wife about the dead body in the bathroom or what they were doing/thinking/not admitting to when they said that. You're actually thinking about yourself, and that is inhibiting. So, when we share our work in the creative writing classroom, the spirit needs to be not ‘check this out, it’s pretty flipping brilliant’ but ‘this is what I’m trying to do, what works and how can I improve it?’

That requires removing your ego from the equation.

It’s not about you; it’s about the work.

THAT is helpful. THAT is a place of learning.

I encourage my students to think about writing as oboe practice. It doesn’t have to be an oboe it can be a ukulele, whatever you fancy, just go with me a minute. We practice a musical instrument a little each day not to join an orchestra in five weeks’ time, be a soloist in ten. We practice each day to become a little bit better than we were the day before. And so, let’s try and write every day not to produce something great but to become a little bit better each time. And in order to see the need to learn the craft and practice it, we need to be able to see our work simultaneously as ‘not good’ or ‘not good enough yet’ aswell as ‘having something’ or ‘worth working on’. We need to embrace the right kind of insecurity.

So, on the cusp of publishing my sixth book and after some amazing reviews, reviews which tell me my work has moved people by giving them characters they believed in and rooted for, am I able to say ‘I am good’? Good God, no! If I say that, I am dead creatively. None of my books are as good as I want them to be. If I’m proud of them it is because they are the best that I could possibly do at the time. Whatever I do next, I will try to do better. I will read my work back and think, no, not good enough. But I will not sit in a corner and weep. Well, I might, but after that I will return to it and think, right, how can I improve it? I can embrace the doubts I have in relation to my work and apply practical measures that have to do with the craft I have spent over a decade learning. This might be cutting the dialogue back or showing the character through an action where I have been telling not showing, or upping the tension by adding an emotional or a physical obstacle. Whatever, in personal terms, it is about using insecurity in the right way, in other words, using the critical voice constructively not destructively.

But maybe the question here, for all of us, is not why don’t we write but why don’t we do whatever it is we dream of doing? Releasing into the world the work you have sweated and fretted and cried over is a risk. It is terrifying. It is exhilarating. Getting on stage is the same. Ditto singing in public. Playing that oboe. But if you think about it hard enough – and boy, do I ever – walking out of your front door is a risk, isn’t it? What if no one likes you? What if you say the wrong thing? What if your skirt is tucked into the back of your knickers? We are all of us worried about something. But if we can acknowledge our insecurity and realise that everyone else feels it too, we can begin to be kind in our intentions towards others and most importantly towards ourselves. We can relax and create the space we need to improve in whatever it is we’re aiming to do ... and help others to do that too.