Confidence

Writers need a lot of things - paper, writing utensils, computers, printers... yada yada yada.  They also need balls... errr... confidence.  Well, they need confidence if they want to be anything more than people putting words on paper for themselves, that is.  Come to think of it, you don't really need a lick of confidence to write something for yourself, but I digress...

Confidence.  You need it.  And unfortunately, it's not something you can buy at the Wallyworld. 

You need confidence to send a query letter.  You need confidence to send your book out on submission.  You need boatloads of confidence to self-publish, because it's only you telling yourself you're good enough.

And, yes, I mean YOU'RE good enough.  Yeah, yeah, I've heard that rejections are 'nothing personal', but the words we write are intensely personal.  Or to paraphrase from You've Got Mail, 'When you say 'it's nothing personal', you mean it's nothing personal to you. It's personal to me.'

So you need confidence. The funny thing about confidence, though, is that you can have it one day and lose it the next. 

Back in late 2014, I pulled every iota of my confidence into a shining sphere, hammered it into a shield, and went out into the world, ready to take on self-publishing.  Two years later?  I'm holding a handle wondering where my shield went.  A little off here, a little off there... and it's gone.

Oh, I managed to cobble a little confidence back together early in the year so I could put Natural Causes out there.  Crickets.

And so, right now, my confidence is gone.

Oh, I know I can write.  Like I said, I never needed confidence for that.  I just have no confidence that I can make any money at this anymore.  I'm not sure what I write is what the public wants and I'm totally not sure I can write whatever it is the public wants.  And every time I sit down to work on writing or editing, the little voice in the back of my head says 'what's the point?' 

I know... wah.  Cry me a river.  Boo hoo.  :shrug:  x+y=z, a is a, it is what it is.

Not sure what the future will bring at this point. Maybe all this will pass, I'll gird my loins and step back into battle.  Until then?  I don't know.  I'd ask you to stay tuned, but I'm not going to ask anyone to sit and watch static until the program comes back on.  But trust me, if anything changes, you'll be the first to know.