I’ve been reading some wonderful writing, also cruising around evaluating various blogs, seeing strengths and weaknesses therein. I love how this medium has opened up to let so many people’s ideas, stories, information, inspiration flow. But I also feel critical of some of the gas, drivel, wasted words. I’m not clicking “like” unless I see depth and substance. Now instead of writing some decent posts from what I have inside, I’m accumulating unpublished drafts, going back to edit and re-edit, critiquing too much. I’ve always been prone to a cycle of what seems like inspiration, followed by a crash of self confidence. I feel such need of approval, to have someone get excited about my ideas and hold my hand while I take the next steps. And insecurity about my competence or knowledge. Try to talk myself out of that–after all, what’s the worse that can happen if I publish something poorly conceived or poorly expressed? Good Lord, I’m in my forties–can’t I let go of the need for approval at least enough to take risks in things that really matter to me?
Article: On Insecurity and Writing
Star in the Wind 
thelandroverownerswife
March 2, 2013 at 2:05 pm
Honey, if you knew the number of times I started a post, then ‘rubbed’ it all out, restarted it etc. etc. etc. The thing is when something really matters to you, then you are naturally going to feel more pressure to do the subject, what ever it is, justice and maybe you’re getting this need to do it justice confused with getting approval?
Incidentally, I have an entire folder on my PC which is currently home to some ’20’ topics which I thought I might, someday publish on my blog and some of those are a couple of years old and were initially started to go on my old blog! It’s likely that ‘someday’ will never come because I just don’t feel ready to write of these pieces yet. i think that to have doubts about your competence and knowledge and the need for approval are all perfectly normal emotions that most ‘normal’ bloggers feel at some point.
Don’t let the topics which are currently sitting in draft/outline form, or even still floating about in your conscience, play on your mind so much. Look back through your blog and realise that for every 1,2 or 3 blogs still waiting to be finished, you have completed and published others that have generated feedback and followers and accept that now just isn’t the right time for the unfinished posts but when your inner writer has finally sussed out what to say and how to say it, it’ll be like turning the tap on and you wont be able to stop yourself 🙂
Gillian
March 9, 2013 at 11:12 pm
Thanks for your encouragement and perspective–so appreciated! Sorry for not replying–your comment was hidden in spam.