I am re-editing Apocalypse, which originally was two novels until I realized the first novel would fit into the second one nicely. I intended this to be the next developmental edit until I got swamped with self-doubt during the editing:
Is the premise asking people to suspend disbelief too readily? Is the plot evolving too fast? Did I lose too much in the edit? Should I just give up writing?
Any writers who read this will understand self-doubt, the plague of writers everywhere. Or is it?
If self-doubt becomes the cloud of negative self-talk with generalizations like "I can't write", "I'll never get the hang of it," and "my work sucks", self-doubt is a plague that should be banished along with overcooked green beans and day-long meetings. Cognitive distortions (overgeneralization, all or nothing thinking and name-calling in the example presented) provide no real information to help us improve and only serve to make us feel bad.
But there's healthy self-doubt, the part that helps us edit the self-indulgent pieces out of our writing, the ones that help us bridge gaps in plot, flesh out characters, and make our books better than we thought they could be.
May we only have good self-doubt.
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Today's weather (snow and ice) has left me with an unscheduled writing retreat at home. I'm not complaining at all.
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