How resilient are you?
Because if you want to write and publish stories, developing resiliency skills are essential.
If you want to publish traditionally, you will likely face agent rejections before finding one. Once you have an agent, they will likely face rejections when sending your manuscript to publishers.
What about if you’re planning to self-publish (maybe thinking this will help avoid the agent rejections journey)? Bad reviews? Or, no reviews? No sales?
Regardless of what publishing, optioning, or selling road you’re planning to go down, you will face rejection. It’s part of the process.
Read on to learn how to flex that resiliency muscle and be ready to face rejection, or a bad review, or no sales, and tackle tough times like a pro.
Resilient writers tend to hold positive views of themselves. They believe in their own abilities. They believe their writing is good enough to find an agent, to find a publisher, to find an audience. This enables them to face the difficulties of agent rejections, publisher rejections, and reader rejections. It allows them to write that second book if the first one fails.
Less resilient writers tend to hold self-limiting beliefs. Self-limiting beliefs need practice to overcome.
Here are five ways to overcome self-limiting beliefs so you can grow into a resilient writer:
1. OWN YOUR SELF-LIMITING BELIEFS AND NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
The first step in coping with self-limiting beliefs is owning them. Don’t shove them aside. When you have a negative thought about your writing, stop yourself. Recognize what you just thought. Write it down.
2. IS THIS A FEELING OR A FACT?
Once you’ve identified and owned negative thoughts like “I’m never going to finish this or I’m never going to find an agent or my novel’s just not good enough,” decide whether it’s a feeling or fact. Self-limiting beliefs are almost always a feeling. You don’t know whether any of those above statements are facts. That means it’s a feeling, not a fact. Feelings can be managed.
3. MAKE YOUR SELF-LIMITING BELIEFS MORE MANAGEABLE
Think about how you can tweak your self-limiting belief so it’s not all negative and you can manage it. For example, say you’re thinking: “I’m never going to find an agent.” Tweak that to: “If I keep sending out query letters I’ll have a better chance of finding an agent.” Do you see the effect that has on you? Now you can keep sending out query letters. The thought no longer paralyzes you.
4. PRACTICE POSITIVE THOUGHTS
Practice thinking positively about your work, before your negative self-limiting beliefs take over. Before you start writing, or before you self-publish, or send out a query letter, tell yourself: “Today I’m going to write for 20 minutes and I’ll be satisfied with what I write.” Or, “today I’m going to send out five query letters and I’ll be satisfied with that.” When you complete your goal for the day, try telling yourself: “I’m grateful I just wrote for 20 minutes and had the opportunity to be creative today. Or, I’m grateful I just sent out five more query letters. I’m five steps closer to finding an agent.”
5. TAKE ACTION
One of the best ways to conquer self-limiting beliefs is to take action and do it anyway. So if you’re telling yourself “this is too hard or this is too scary,” get writing or send out those query letters. When you finish you get to say “See! I did it! You said it was too hard.” Or, “you said it was too scary. But I wrote anyway (or sent out query letters) and it was hard, but it wasn’t too hard, and now I’m finished.” See how that makes you feel?
