For the past several years, I have been battling depression. I didn’t know it for most of that time, but I did know that I was basically incapable of writing anything.
Recently, I have been doing much better. I finally found the right combination of medication. I started doing yoga. I’ve taken up meditation. I bought a bunch of crystals. Seriously, I’m not joking.
Anyway, the point is that I have been writing again! And I have quickly discovered that I am horrible at writing, all of my stories suck, and nobody will ever want to read them, let alone publish them.
Ahhh, self-doubt, ye heinous bastard.
Depression is the worst. It makes you feel mostly empty. It makes you feel like everything you do is meaningless. It makes you feel like you are a failure. And it takes away any desire to do things, even things that are fun. So you force yourself to do the things you have to do in order to live – go to work, eat, clean the litter box because it’s not your cat’s fault you don’t feel like doing anything ever, do the laundry, etc.
And yeah, that was a pretty low point for me. And I would consider my depression mild.
Now that I can write again, I’m finding myself dealing with completely different emotions that I just didn’t have the ability to feel before.
So I’m only just now finding that I have No Faith in my ability. Somewhere between being a care-free pre-teen writing doofy stories about dragons and finally writing again, I lost my confidence.
When I’m working on the story itself, I get all excited and I’m not worried about anything.
When I think about trying to get published, I get all freaked out and start wondering who I think I am.
Writers have to believe that someone is going to want to invest several hours of their time to read what they have written. I want what I write to be worthy of that time and I’m terrified that I will never be good enough to live up to that.
After reading this inspiring blog, I’m realizing that this comes with the territory. You wanna be a writer? Write! But also regularly lose all confidence in every word you’ve ever written!
Listen, I’m a Gemini. I’m used to dualities. (Side note for those who think horoscopes are hippie mumbo-jumbo: Gemini is represented by the Twins and they are generally known for having many different sides to them.) Now that I know this is normal, I’ll just be continually fluctuating between excitement and terror.
No biggie.
Now where my crystals at? I got work to do.
