The Great Complicator

I have just published a book called Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt. Which is to say, it’s a book about confidence, about where it can be found, where it can’t, and why everyone is born with natural confidence whether they ever learn to access it or not. If you’re a writer, you have probably had your share of self-doubt. I certainly did. I experienced it after rejections, of course, but also, for many years, simply when I reached the end of a sentence and didn’t know what would come next.

If it took too long to find what came next, I’d begin to doubt I could, or if I ever would, or I would wonder if a better writer would have found the way sooner. It’s an insidious line of thought. If I doubt I’ll find the next sentence or word or idea, then I won’t. Period. As long as I’m doubting, the door to ideas and inspiration remains closed. In this way, doubt is an immediate self-fulfilling prophecy.

Everyone experiences this sort of self-doubt, whether they like to write stories or not. However, to write a story often gives one the opportunity to choose between doubt and confidence a dozen times in one morning. Though I’m really not choosing between two things. I’m actually only choosing to doubt or not to doubt. What I have come to understand as confidence is where I am naturally left when I am not doubting. Doubt requires my effort; confidence does not.

I used to see confidence as an expression of an athletic willpower. I had to summon confidence, or choose to be confident. All I need to do to access its support and guidance is focus upon something that interests me and that I’d like to learn more about. I know it sounds very simple, and that’s because it is. Doubt is the great complicator, what builds the maze to what we want, what asks the unanswerable question, that demands we know what we cannot know. Don’t argue or negotiate with it. Don’t show it any evidence. It’s an enemy you can’t defeat, only ignore as you turn your attention to the story you want to tell, rather than the reasons you shouldn’t tell it.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com