How to Beat Your Writing Fears and Grow in Courage as an Author

Edie here! Today is a bucket-list moment for me. One of my all time favorite bloggers, Ali Luke (Also known by @AliVentures) is guesting today on The Write Conversation. I've been following her blog almost since she began and her insight, wisdom, and encouragement have kept me on track more times than I can even count. Today I get to introduce you to her! Please give her a wonderful TWC welcome! And be sure to subscribe to her site—you'll never regret it!

How to Beat Your Writing Fears and Grow in Courage as an Author

by Ali Luke @AliVentures

Do you find yourself holding back from writing because you just don’t feel confident enough?

I know so many writers who’ll spend their time reading book after book or taking course after course, convinced that they just need to learn one more thing or master one more aspect of writing.

The problem is, you can’t ever become a better writer without writing. You’re not going to suddenly become confident just because you read a great writing tip.

When I researched my short ebook The Courageous Writer, I found so many well-known, successful writers talking about their feelings of self-doubt or imposter syndrome.

Here’s what Neil Gaiman has said, for instance:

“In my case, I was convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don’t know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job, one that didn’t consist of making things up and writing them down, and reading books I wanted to read. And then I would go away quietly and get the kind of job where you don’t get to make things up anymore.”

This feeling that you’re just not good enough, or even that your writing success so far could be taken away from you, is normal. It absolutely doesn’t say anything about the quality of your writing—Neil Gaiman has won dozens of awards.

Of course, feeling this kind of self-doubt can make it really tough to actually write. So what can you do to keep moving forward despite your fears? 

Here are 5 manageable steps to take with your writing:

1. Build a Small, Regular Writing Habit

During 2024, one of my writing goals has been to write 250 (or more) words each day. It’s a pretty small writing goal … but it’s adding up fast. 

In the first half of the year, I wrote 61,726 words. That’s nearly the same length as an average novel.

Could you commit to a small, regular amount of writing? You might not want to write every day, but I’d suggest writing at least weekly to build up momentum.

You could try one of these options:

• Write for at least 10 minutes every day

• Write at least 100 words every day

• Write for an hour every Saturday

On a day-to-day or week-by-week basis, it might seem hardly worth writing. But even 100 words a day adds up to 36,500 words in a year—that’s potentially a whole novella or nonfiction book.

2. Rework Your First Draft (Multiple Times)

No one’s first draft is perfect—or anywhere near perfect—but I see so many writers feeling that their writing is “bad” just because their draft material doesn’t match up to the standard of the published books they read.

It’s not a fair comparison to draw. When you read a novel, a competition-winning story, a bestselling nonfiction book, or a viral blog post, you aren’t reading the author’s first draft.

Instead, the piece you read might well have gone through several rounds of drafting. At the very least, it’s probably gone through these three steps:

• Rewriting (big-picture changes, like removing whole chapters)

• Editing (more detailed tweaks, like honing every sentence)

• Proofreading (checking for typos and grammatical errors)

In many cases, the author will not only have gone through multiple rounds of self-editing —they’ll also have had help from an editor, beta reader, or writers’ group. 

If you really want to see what you’re capable of as a writer, you need to rework your first draft—probably several times. 

3. Finish a Piece of Writing

It’s hard to feel much confidence as a writer if you never truly finish anything. Do you have a novel you’ve been working for years (or even decades), constantly going back and reworking it? Or maybe you’ve started a dozen different stories, only to abandon them all after a few pages?

Choose a piece and see it through to completion. Even finishing a short story or piece of flash fiction and being done with it can give you a real sense of accomplishment.

If you’re struggling, give yourself a deadline and even consider creating a timetable for your edits. You can tweak all you want … until the time is up. Then, your piece is finished, even if you feel it’s still not perfect.

4. Show Your Writing to a Trusted Friend

While some people write purely for themselves (perhaps in a diary or journal), most of us are writing because we want to share our words with the world. 

A great step towards that is to find a trusted friend, perhaps a fellow writer or an avid reader, and invite them to read some of your writing.

I know this can be really daunting, but chances are, you’ll get some positive feedback about what you’re doing well … and that can be a huge boost to your confidence.

When you’re trusting someone else with your writing, it can help to let them know what sort of response you might be looking for. Are you just asking them to read it and say what they liked best about it, or are you looking for constructive criticism? Be clear—with yourself and with your friend—about what would be helpful to you at this stage.

5. Submit Your Work to a Competition or Publisher

At some point, your writing needs to go out into the world beyond your circle of family and friends. 

A great way to let your finished pieces go is to submit them to a competition (my favourite home for short stories) or to an agent or publisher. I know this can take a lot of courage, and I know how disheartening it can be to have a piece rejected or to face unexpected setbacks … but it really does get easier the more you do it.

An alternative here is to publish your work yourself. That might be on a blog or through a site like Medium (nonfiction) or WattPad (fiction). 

Writing can be daunting and it’s completely normal to feel doubts or struggle with an internal critical voice. But if you can push forward and write despite those feelings, you’ll be able to lean into your courage and your ability to set doubt aside.

You have every right to enjoy writing, to pour your time and energy into your work, and to push yourself forward so you can have the joy of seeing your writing out there in the world.

If you do nothing else this week, set aside some time to simply have fun with your writing … and see where it leads you.

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How to Beat Your Writing Fears & Grow in Courage as an Author from @AliVentures on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Ali Luke is a writing coach and the author of The Courageous Writer: How to Grow in Confidence and Nurture Your Creativity, a short, free ebook. She’s also written three novels and a novella, Publishing Ebooks For Dummies, and hundreds of blog posts for her own site Aliventures and for many other sites across the web.