Writing makes us all into insecure little weirdos.
A table with a colourful table cloth. There’s a mug full of spoons, a tray full of chia seed pudding, and a blackboard with the message: “To help with a fruitful silence: Chia Pudding Parfaits with Strawberry Peach Compote & ‘Hearts on Fire’ Granola”
I want to tell you a story from a writing retreat this year.
On that last day of retreats, we all wake up in silence. It’s all gentle sounds — tapping keyboards, slippered footsteps, birds, breakfast getting made, coffee percolating. We tell the group the night before to tune into whatever their inner writer needs when they wake up; a bath, a book, a last push. We remind them that writing isn’t just about putting words down, it’s about nourishing the part of us that needs to write.
On this particular retreat, one participant was feeling awful.
Late morning, back around the table , I asked everyone to share how they were doing. This participant’s voice was wavering, her face downcast. “I got a few things done,” she said, “But not as much as everyone else. I kept looking at Jane. She was writing so passionately! She wrote the whole time! God, I wish I could be more like her.”
Jane looked up with big eyes and a tilted head. “Me? Oh, my project’s been stalled for hours. I was writing an angry letter to my husband.”
Oh, the laughter in that moment. Sweet, booming relief. For all our talk of self-compassion, every person in the room had been secretly comparing themselves to her.
Here’s the heart of it: Writing makes us all into insecure little weirdos.
It’s fine. I sometimes talk about it as a garden — The Garden of Insecurities — a sudden ecosystem that grows all around us when we’re vulnerable. The blossoms and stems whisper:
If you can’t write like that person why bother?
If you’re not as confident as that person, why try?
Look at that person — there’s a *real* writer.
I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have some version of this in their head the entire time that they’re writing.
And yet, it doesn’t have to stop us.
We can feel insecure and still write.
We can feel not-enough and still belong.
We can feel terrified and still take chances.
It’s actually the only way.
This is one of the reasons that we put so much focus on positive feedback at Firefly. It’s not just that it feels good. It’s that we’re so hard on ourselves that we rarely listen closely enough to hear our own voices or know what we want to say.
Or, we’re lucky and we do break out of our negative self-talk long enough to get some words down… And some asshole pipes up with, “Your characters don’t make any sense to me” and wham, it’s closed again. That happens in creative circles all the time. We don’t want that for you.
What I’m saying is this — your fear, uncertainty and insecurity have a home here. They have to, because they’re not going anywhere. And, we will always be working to help you turn away from those voices, come back to your work, and just keep writing.
And meanwhile, the garden will grow. Sometimes it will be gnarly. But just because it’s there doesn’t mean you need to make flower crowns. Come back, come back, put the next word down, then the next. The voice in your head doesn’t have final say, you do.
Remember — a writer is a person who has the urge to write and acts on that urge.
It’s not a person who is constantly confident. It’s not a person who moves forward without fear. It’s just a person who keeps stumbling back to the page, imperfectly, over and over.
In it with you,
