I love this quote which I recently came across...
Edward Albee is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of famous plays such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance and Seascape, and he also adapted Truman Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's for the stage. You can read more about him here.
People often ask me why I write. Sometimes, I ask myself! I think every writer battles more or less constantly with the concern that their words won't matter. We worry that readers will dislike our characters, misunderstand our concepts and - worst of all - hate our created word-worlds. Confidence (both the lack of it and the battle to maintain it) is a major issue.
Over the past few years since becoming a published author, I have had to work hard to recapture the glimpses of audacious self-belief that got me writing in the first place. When it didn't matter - when the only person interested in what happened next was me - there was something strong enough within that convinced me to believe in the story and pursue it. My aim now is to grab those moments whenever I find them and hang on for dear life!
That hope, that rock-steady conviction that my ideas are worth pursuing, that seemingly ridiculous optimism in what I can create, will be the molten steel from which my stories will be moulded. Once poured into shape, that confident hope will set firm to underpin my self-belief for the next stage of my writing, the next story, or the grand unveiling of my ideas to the world.
If you're struggling to believe in your story, print out the quote above and put it somewhere you can see it. Your writing matters - so be optimistic!
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