The annual MetaStellar story submission period has officially closed, and the results are so cool to see. More than 300 stories were submitted for reading and consideration; more than 300 authors are now awaiting their response messages.
If you’re one of the folks who submitted to MetaStellar, pat yourself on the back. Writing a story and sharing it is an act of bravery, and I’m so glad you took that chance! You’ve done something many won’t. You’ve gotten out of your own way, written a story, and sent it into the world. Bravo, you unicorn of a human, you. Take this month or so to “be” in all your writerlyness, but you know the drill: When one story is done, it’s time to start the next one.
However, I know that among the unicorns of the world, many of you haven’t yet earned your horn. You’re still horses running through the meadow dreaming of what your horn will look like once you earn it. If you wanted to write a story to submit but didn’t, ask yourself what really held you back from writing?
What held you back from becoming the writerly unicorn you know you can be?
There are many who believe one must be naturally gifted in the wielding of words to write well, but that outlook is often a limiting belief disguised as “truth” and designed to kibosh our writing before we get a chance to explore it fully. Truthfully, those with natural writing gifts spent much of their lives learning language and storytelling techniques even if they didn’t realize they were learning at the time. That’s because many of those naturally gifted writers are avid and voracious readers with massive book appetites and miles-long to-be-read book lists. The sheer act of reading will give you much by way of writing education as you gain an intimate knowledge of voice and style, develop your intuition for story structure and technique, and level up your language skills while surrounded by words written by those who write well.
I, for one (and hopefully you, too), am not willing to die with my best stories trapped inside my gray matter and left to the worms. I will not allow fear, my own ego, to hold me back from achieving what I want. Becoming an author, however, is not without its challenges.
Here are some common writing hangups and ways to overcome them so you can finally get out of your own way and write (and submit) that story.
Perfect writing conditions don’t exist.
If you’re the kind of aspiring writer who believes you just need the perfect conditions to pen your magnum opus, it’s likely you’ll never finish writing a single page, let alone the entire body of work. Perfect conditions, just like perfect people, don’t exist for the simple reason that there is no singular view of what “perfect” means.
Just like snowflakes, writers are a varied bunch, and no two are exactly alike:
- Some writers use music to get into the writing mood and may create or choose specific playlists depending on what they’re writing. Other writers need the silence and find music far too distracting to focus on writing.
- Some writers hit their flow state and run with it, breathlessly getting down word after word until they’re creatively and emotionally spent and need to rest and recuperate. Other writers, however, write for a set number of minutes or hours per session, stopping when their clock chimes even if they’re mid-sentence.
- Some writers swear by a daily writing habit and stick to it come hell or high water; no weather condition, family chaos, planning emergency, or aught else will rock that habit-boat. For other writers, writing daily means more work later to fix the output from low-energy or low-creativity days, so they aim for a few days a week instead.
If you find yourself promising you’ll write when the time is right, please scrap that reassess. The time is almost never right to start a marathon project like a novel. The only right time to start is, then, the moment you start.
If you’re an “I need perfect conditions” aspiring writer, take this as your sign to start writing, today. When your novel is finally finished, you can thank me in the acnknowledgements for giving you the kick in the pants you needed way back when. (I kid, I kid.)
Writing is a form of delayed gratification.
The digital age is conditioning us — via social media and click-bait headlines — to seek out neurotransmitter stimulation, a near-constant drip of dopamine that creates artificial and temporary feel-good vibes. The quest for instant gratification, for immediate validation, is, however, a net harm for the human psyche and can effectively trash motivation while fluffing egos.
That quest for immediate validation leads to some interesting outcomes, like:
- Dreaming ahead of the awards speech you’ll give after your novel wins the Pulitzer Prize;
- Imagining all the spin-offs you’ll be able to write using your cast of characters and the world you created; or
- Picturing yourself signing autographs with a queue that stretches out the door and around the corner while flashbulbs capture the moment.
And your crafty brain can do all of this forward thinking even if you never write down a single word. Those daydreams operate like quick fixes, giving us dopamine surges long before we actually accomplish the goal of our daydreams. In fact, the need for instant gratification is often linked to unhealthy behaviors that promote ease and convenience, rather than challenge us to do or become better. By giving into those behaviors, you make it easier to fall into patterns of the same behaviors, which makes it increasingly difficult to break those cycles.
If you find yourself dreaming more about the life you’ll have once you’ve become an author rather than focusing on putting in the good work necessary to become an author, your task is to break the cycle of ease and convenience holding you back. Your task is to learn to appreciate delayed gratification.
In his book, Ego Is The Enemy, Ryan Holiday writes, “Every time you sit down to work, remind yourself: I am delaying gratification by doing this. I am passing the marshmallow test. I am earning what my ambition burns for. I am making an investment in myself instead of in my ego.”
Honestly, Ryan’s quote is about to become my desktop background. How’s that for a daily reminder not to self-sabotage?
Your inner critic is an enemy.
The authors we think of as masters at the tops of their writing crafts all started at the bottom. They had doubts and fears and rejection anxiety and dreams of success and plenty of failures to humble them along the way. The same will likely be true of your trajectory. When learning a new skill, especially a skill we think of as foundational and intuitive as written communication, you’re bound to experience at least a little self-doubt.
Sometimes, though, that self-doubt blossoms into a fully fledged motivation monster that will berate you until you give up completely, put away your story, and never again open that file or notebook. That motivation monster is your inner critic, and when your inner critic tells you you’re a bad writer, you may have a knee-jerk tendency to listen to that voice. Don’t.
That voice isn’t being kind or truthful; that voice is attempting to stop you from achievement because stagnation feels safer than progress. Pardon me, but I don’t for a second believe that staying the same — never changing, never growing, never learning, never being more than what I am today — is a good idea.
But just like every author has a different writing process, every author has a different way to work with their inner critic and move forward.
- If your inner critic says your achievement isn’t real, try stepping away from your embodied experience. Ask yourself: Would I consider this an achievement if it happened to someone else? If yes, congraulate that person and, in turn, congratulate yourself.
- If your inner critic says you’re a terrible writer who will never be good enough to share your writing, look for evidence that you know what you’re doing. Comments or compliments received from those who have read your work, accolades for storytelling-adjacent activities, and other affirmative remarks go a long way.
- If your inner critic is the type to qualify all things in black and white (this is good, that is bad), it may be time to embrace the inherent flaws of being human. Try this mantra, which promotes your “becoming” rather than your “being:” I’m not a good person, though I strive to do good. I am, therefore, a work in progress.
Quieting your inner critic is not easy, but moving forward means listening less to the pernicious voice holding you back and more to the focused voice pushing you out of your comfort zone.
TL;DR: You are holding you back.
Consider all the plans you’ve made to write, how much you dream of holding your novel in hand, of talking with excited readers, of signing autographs, talking craft, reading at bookshops, and more. Then ask yourself whether you’re actually taking the necessary steps and building the necessary habits to achieve the humungous goal of writing a novel.
- Are you waiting for perfect conditions that don’t exist?
- Are you seeking instant gratification and kiboshing the process?
- Are you listening to that inner critic tell you all the reasons you shouldn’t write?
If you’re now realizing that you, unicorn-curious friend, are the person solely responsible for holding you back, write down all the reasons why writing that story is important to you. What do you want to share with the world? Then, make a plan to achieve that which you set out to do.
So, how do you get out of your own way and write? Let me know in the comments below, and share this article with fellow writers who need to hear this message. Hopefully, we’ll see your story in the next submission cycle.
Happy writing.
<3 Fal
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Fallon Clark is the book pal who helps you tell your story in your words and voice using editorial, coaching, writing, and project management expertise for revision assistance, one-on-one guidance, and ghostwriting for development. Her writing has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine. Check out her website, FallonClark.com, or connect with her on LinkedIn or Substack.