Episode Description:
In this episode of What If For Authors, Claire dives into the deeply personal question: What if I’m not a great writer? With candor and compassion, Claire explores what the idea of “greatness” even means in the world of writing, reminding us how subjective and vague that term can be. She examines how societal expectations and personal insecurities can distort our self-perception as writers and offers practical, grounded strategies for dealing with the anxiety this question can bring up.
Key Takeaways:
Defining “Greatness” in Writing: Claire unpacks the concept of “great” in writing, showing how it’s almost impossible to define universally. Is greatness based on sales, ratings, critical acclaim, longevity? Claire reminds us that each reader has their own standard, making greatness in writing a subjective term that may not be worth obsessing over.
Perfection Isn’t a Requirement for Success: We’ve all read bestsellers that didn’t resonate or books with high ratings that seemed flawed. Claire highlights how this disconnect reminds us that being a successful writer doesn’t mean appealing to everyone’s standard of “great.” Your writing doesn’t have to meet every possible benchmark to matter.
Learning Through the Pain of Growth: Improving as a writer is beneficial not only for our craft but also for our well-being. Learning can be intimidating because it often means confronting past mistakes or gaps in knowledge. Claire suggests viewing that discomfort as a sign of growth, reframing cringe-worthy moments as proof of progress.
Using Anxiety as a Call to Action: Anxiety around not being a “great” writer can be reframed as a call to action. Instead of letting anxiety paralyze us, Claire recommends channeling it into meaningful activities like learning a new writing skill, taking a craft course, or practicing a specific storytelling technique.
Completing the Stress Cycle: To manage lingering anxiety, Claire encourages listeners to complete their stress cycle with physical activity or relaxation techniques. Recognizing and acting on anxiety in a healthy way helps us stay present and productive, avoiding the endless loops of worry that don’t serve us.
A Practical Approach When Doubting Your Writing:
Recognize that “great” is a subjective, often meaningless label.
Embrace anxiety as a signal that there may be an opportunity for growth.
Channel that energy into learning something new about your craft, but don’t let fear drive you into information overload.
Complete the stress cycle with movement or a calming activity to bring yourself back to a grounded state.
Why You Should Listen: This episode is for any writer who has ever doubted their skill or wondered if they’re truly capable of being “great.” Claire offers both mindset shifts and practical strategies to help you reframe these questions in a way that encourages growth without letting fear take the lead. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by self-doubt or the pressure to excel, this episode will leave you feeling reassured, empowered, and ready to keep moving forward.
Join the Conversation: Have you questioned your abilities as a writer? What does “greatness” mean to you? Share your thoughts with Claire by emailing contact@ffs.media or join the conversation on social media.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor, and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, by going to ffs.media/sustain.
I want to start today by recognizing everybody who has been listening to this podcast abroad, as in abroad from the US, right? I'm very US centric in my thinking. , it's just been really fascinating to see the list of countries where people are listening from and see it grow over the last few months.
So shout out to listeners from the Netherlands, Austria, Israel, Costa Rica, Sweden, Germany, India, India, Hong Kong, South Africa, Nicaragua, Turkey, Italy, so many more. The list goes on.
Of course, all of the predominantly English speaking countries are up there at the top of the listening leaderboard, like Canada, the [00:01:00] UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand. Anyway, Just wanted to say hello to everyone. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen to the show.
Today's episode is a big one. For many of us, this question cuts straight to our identity as writers. It's entirely possible that you've pondered today's question only briefly before seeking a distraction due to its unpleasantness, but today we're not going to let our attention bounce off this question.
We're going to dive in together and ask What if I'm not a great writer?
I'll be honest, this is a big one for me. I bump up against this question often, and I never like it, but I wouldn't be much help to you if I didn't do my best to sit with the discomfort before asking you to do the same. I don't know if I've ever sat with it for, like, a full 30 minutes, like I will today, so this might be a new experience for me [00:02:00] as I walk us through this interview.
This question in detail, but as always, the things that trigger us and make it hard to stay focused tend to be where we can mine the most useful information and find the most growth if we can just sit in the discomfort long enough.
So what if I'm not a great writer? Now, the first obvious question to this is who gets to decide that? Who passes judgment on what makes a great writer anyway? What's the measure here? As soon as we start to really pick that apart, we see the word great disintegrate before our eyes. What does it even mean?
Kind of a meaningless word, isn't it? Different people measure greatness differently. So one person might base it on book sales and say, yeah, that's a great book. Look at the sales. Another person might. Based on average ratings and someone else might say it's only great if you know, quote unquote real critics say it's great.
Some people would even [00:03:00] argue that we can't measure greatness until a book has endured for a generation or two. So what makes a great book? If we can't agree on a basic definition or measurement, then Maybe we're asking the wrong question to start with. There's also a static nature to being a great writer that doesn't really pass the smell test.
Can a great writer produce a not so great book? Can they only produce one great book and still be a great writer? How much of a writer's catalog needs to be considered great for them to be a great writer?
I would reckon we can all think of an author that we consider a great writer, um, even if some of their books just didn't hit for us.
And that variation in our perceived quality of their catalog, it can give us permission to have some variability in our own catalog.
After all, the books that didn't resonate with you might be the perfect fit for someone else. So it's [00:04:00] just all subjective is what I'm getting at here.
You might notice that just in this deconstruction that we've done already, you're feeling a little less panicky about the question, what if I'm not a great writer? The third thing I'll say is that it's okay Not to be whatever arbitrary standard of greatness you've set. Honestly, it's fine.
Don't let the fact that you were in the Gifted and Talented program growing up convince you that you're only worthy if you're great at something.
While that belief may seem like the American way, there are plenty of cultures and practices that value spending time on things you're not great at. and may never excel in. Now, some of you might reject that idea right away because it goes against your ego's need to stand out.
If that's you, I challenge you to just entertain the idea for a few more minutes. Entertain the idea that there [00:05:00] is value in spending your time on things like this. That you may never be the best at. You may never feel fully competent or capable at. You may never be called great at. How would your life be different if you felt no pressure to be great, let alone to be the best at what you do?
What energy might that free up? What emotions? might you be able to unlock? How would it change how you spend your time and attention?
One common refrain I hear from authors, usually whisper during one on one coaching calls, is that a lot of these books that are selling aren't that good. So the people I'm talking to often sound very scandalized about this, as if greatness in their eyes should be a prerequisite for sales. But clearly it's not, right?
We've all read a book that was raved about by everyone we know, only to open it up. it, [00:06:00] try to read it, and find it absolutely lacking. Maybe the author's particular writing quirks graded on you, like maybe they use the same phrase repeatedly, or they write flat characters with inconsistent motivations. We all know that feeling of how is this a bestseller?
But if we sit with that question, we realize we've set an expectation for there to be some correlation between sales and greatness that just doesn't exist. There's something in the book that a lot of people found great, sure, but it doesn't have to be your idea of greatness. So this brings us to a logical conclusion, and that's you don't need to be a great writer by every measure to be a valid writer.
and successful writer.
If you're really worried that your writing just isn't up to snuff, what you can do is start to learn more of the craft. Learn it better. That's a very productive use [00:07:00] of our time. So the part of us that always wants to improve and learn new things is a healthy and inspiring part of ourselves. I would never discourage anyone from working to improve their craft.
It's really satisfying and can eventually make your books easier to sell in some ways. It's also just healthy to keep learning, especially as we age. So yeah, definitely go learn from authors you admire, learn their tricks, challenge yourself to do an extra revision pass focused on that new skill. Maybe you want to learn to write stronger chapter hooks.
Okay. Add a revision pass to strengthen all of your chapter hooks, keep learning and improving your craft. The only caveat I'll give here. is. If you're signing up for classes out of a fear that you don't know enough, but you're not actually applying the lessons. So different motivations drive us to improve.
If fear that you're not a good writer is [00:08:00] behind that, You likely have some mental and emotional patterns that make learning unpleasant, bringing up feelings of inadequacy and embarrassment about things you quote unquote should already know.
That brings me to this really important point that I don't think is discussed enough. There is an inherent pain in learning that keeps us from pursuing it with genuine curiosity and openness. And that inherent pain is the possibility of realizing that we have been wrong or foolish in the past.
If we don't cultivate self compassion and humor, learning can be a terrifying prospect. Because what if you realize that you've been doing something embarrassing and idiotic this whole time? Right? Maybe it's something small, like not knowing the difference between two homophones, and maybe you've sent repeated emails using the [00:09:00] wrong one.
Been there. Doesn't feel great. And that's just a homophone error.
Learning means confronting what past versions of ourselves didn't know. That's why it's so painful and takes bravery. It's hard to look back and realize we might have seemed foolish or wrong. And sometimes when we learn something new, like a method for improving our writing, we'll kind of glance back at old work, and just cringe.
But that cringing, and this is important, that cringing is a sign of growth. Every time you cringe, try pausing and saying, Oh, look, I've learned something. That shift in attention, it may seem silly, but it moves us towards growth, which boosts self confidence and reinforces the bravery that it takes to keep learning.
It pulls us away from shame, which we do want to talk about. you know, will just make us shrink and reinforces the idea that learning is somehow dangerous. So we don't want to do that. We want to move away from shame. You [00:10:00] may even be able to cultivate some gratitude for learning the new thing, knowing, huh, well, I, at least I won't make that same mistake again.
So there are really two points I'm trying to make here that I think will help ease some of your anxiety on this topic.
First of all, the word great in the question What if I'm not a great writer is meaningless. It has so many possible definitions that it's not a useful word for us to even give our time and attention to. The second point is that it doesn't matter how you measure up to some random metric of greatness.
Your life will be vastly improved through the process of improving your craft over time, period. Whether you're starting from very little skill, or you've developed a lot of skills already,
continuing the process of improving your writing, your, the technical part of your writing, your storytelling skills, it's not even about, can it sell more books for [00:11:00] you. There's a huge benefit in remembering that we can learn and improve and that it's safe to do so. The process of learning and acknowledging that we can learn, it isn't isolated to a single arena.
If we practice learning our craft, we'll also gain confidence that we can learn other things too, like how to show up for our friends in the way they need, how to be more financially literate, and maybe even how to learn a new physical activity. It's very easy as we move through the years to become stagnant.
And that stagnation leads to an erosion of our self confidence and self esteem, and it makes our world much smaller. If you're listening to my podcast, you probably don't want to be one of those people who becomes more closed minded and stuck in their ways as they age.
So I probably don't need to make a case for why it's important to not fall into that trap, but I do want to be clear that remembering we can learn new skills and improve on our current ones. is a [00:12:00] necessary process to avoid the fate of becoming closed minded, stagnant, and, frankly, friendless. If we allow our fear of being wrong, of not yet knowing, to take root, it will. It likes to protect itself by doubling down. I think we all know someone whose fear of being wrong makes their go to approach to new information doubling down on their existing beliefs, right? You can see how allowing that subtle fear of learning new things to, you know, have oxygen and continue to grow and take root, how that can lead us down a negative path over time. Now
I want to stitch these two points together into something useful, a process you can follow when you find yourself wondering, what if I'm not a great writer? That question is going to bring with it a wave of anxiety, and anxiety itself is not a bad thing. We need anxiety. If we don't have any anxiety, we end up like that guy on [00:13:00] Office Space, and, you know, it worked out okay in the end, but that's not the ideal state of living.
Anxiety is an important part of the human experience. I think of anxiety as a call to action. When we're scared, our body pumps us full of adrenaline. That's literally our brain's way of saying, here you go, either run or fight, but do something.
Anxiety is a call to take action. Now, the amount of anxiety we get from an existential question, like what if I'm not a good writer, is admittedly disproportionate to what we actually need in a situation where nothing is actively chasing us. This is, you know, just one of those quirks of society evolving faster than our biology.
A lot of things that don't directly threaten our survival feel like a matter of survival, and our body responds accordingly by dumping a bucket of cold adrenaline on us. What we can do is take this adrenaline as a call to action and use it in a productive way, like [00:14:00] recognizing it could be encouraging us to learn something new about our craft.
Of course it's important to be mindful about this and not let fear send us down a rabbit hole of like researching whether adverbs really are as lazy as Stephen King would have us believe. We don't want to let this adrenaline send us into an information gathering spiral as if the devil's got its whips at our back.
Partly I don't want that for you because it's a miserable way to live, but also because our brains aren't good at absorbing information when we're in a hyper aroused state.
So all of that information gathering is not actually as productive as it might feel. Telling our anxiety, thank you for the energy, I'll put time on my calendar to learn something new about my craft this week. Can be. Enough to take the edge off and let us move on with our day.
For any anxiety you have left over after you've taken meaningful action or put it on your calendar to take meaningful [00:15:00] action, you can either talk yourself through it or do breathing exercises to calm down or you can put on those running shoes and just walk it off or run it off. I'm not going to tell anyone to take up running.
I hate running personally. So yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but if you like it, go do it. So anyway, completing the stress cycle that our daily anxieties begin is crucial to our emotional, mental, and physical health anyway. So it's not a bad practice when you're anxious to see what action needs to be taken, take that action and whatever's left over, go complete that stress cycle.
All right, to wrap this up, if you find yourself asking, what if I'm not a great writer, remember that the idea of great is essentially bullshit. It's useless. It's overly vague and subjective. And you know, it's not really good for doing anything more than terrorizing school aged kids in the gifted and talented [00:16:00] program.
So then remind yourself that anxiety is a call to action, and meaningful action in this case might be learning something new about writing and storytelling. Just be sure not to let your fear of not having already known something keep you from being curious and open to learning.
That's it for this episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you joined me. What we get to do as writers is fun, and it's interesting, and there's more to it than we could ever learn in a lifetime. Now rather than that being a reason to not bother learning, I find that to be one of the best reasons to keep learning when you have the time and space for it.
And to keep experimenting with how you can apply that learning to your writing. to your next book. I'm Claire Taylor, thanks for joining me from all over the world, and I hope you'll come back for the next episode of What If for Authors. Happy writing!