3. Self-Sabotage

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The harshest, most critical review a book will get is from its author. We all do this, even if we know deep inside it might be some of the best work we've ever done. Reading it a million times won't help. You can come back to it a week, a month or a year later and still find something you would change. For that reason, every writer soon (or eventually) learns there is a point where you have to let it go. Especially if you want to write more than one story.

Sitting on a completed manuscript because you've convinced yourself it's not good enough will not get it published or put your name on an editor's radar. But you should never pin all your hopes on one story. So, if you're not planning or writing your next book when your first is 'out there', you're wasting precious time.

Don't make things more difficult.

Self-sabotage can be an insidious beast. It can appear small and harmless in the beginning, then morph into a monster. Reading over what you've already written before writing a new scene is a prime example. It's fine if you just want to tweak what you wrote in the last session, see where you left off and get back into the zone. A few pages of reading should cover that. A chapter at most. Two if it's been a while since you worked on it. When it becomes four or five chapters, it starts to eat into your writing time. Then suddenly you find yourself reading twenty chapters for the nine hundredth time, and you know there's a problem.

Beating yourself up because something isn't working is another example. Sometimes writing through the pain barrier is necessary, especially if you're close to a deadline, but if it's making the problem worse, you need to take a step back or work on a later scene until you figure out what is wrong. Continue writing linearly without identifying the problem and, when the light-bulb goes on over your head,  you may end up re-writing half a manuscript to fix it!

Think about all the stories you want to write, then ask yourself why you aren't writing them.

Over-committing is another form of self-sabotage. It's tempting to enter every competition and pitch contest, jump at every submission request even if its not normally your thing, or commit to several different projects with tight deadlines because you're afraid you might miss out. Harsh as it may sound, it's the same with offering to critique other writers work or mentoring or judging contests as a reader. A sprinkling of those things here and there is fine if they don't eat into your writing time. They may even lead to contacts who prove invaluable, open up your work to a new readership or result in the break you've been waiting for in publishing. But you've got to be smart about it. Weigh up the pros and cons. Don't put so much pressure on yourself that everything falls apart like the proverbial house of cards.

It's not just about protecting your writing time or underestimating your potential as a writer. It's about valuing your worth as a person, and ensuring you don't develop a toxic relationship with something you presumably love doing. 

The global pandemic demonstrated to a lot of people what can happen when you put too much pressure on yourself. Writers all over the world planned to finish novels during lockdown. But we also had to deal with things like separation from loved ones, loss, homeschooling, fear, financial hardship, isolation, and working from home. Just getting through the day was an achievement. Yet somehow we thought we could be creative and artistic, too? 

For some people creativity may be an escape, for others it may be impossible to create when there are other things going on in their life. Again, it's about what works for you.

Being kind to yourself and focusing on what makes you happy is NOT selfish.

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