The Danger of Feeling Powerless and What Writers Can Do About It

Writers often feel powerless.

We must compete in an increasingly saturated marketplace, and the challenges of marketing our work and building strong platforms can often feel overwhelming as we try to maintain regular writing routines.

After coming up against a defeat or two—which is bound to happen—we can start to feel powerless against all the factors that seem to be working against us.

If you’re feeling this way, take it as a signal that you’re walking through a danger zone. Somehow, you have to regain power if you expect to continue to progress in your career.

How can you do that, particularly when you’re just one writer vying for the attention of readers who have millions of choices?

Writers Need to Have a Sense of Control

Let’s start with one important thing: we all need to feel a sense of control in our lives to be happy and fulfilled.

“Belief in one’s ability to exert control over the environment and to produce desired results is essential for an individual’s well being,” write researchers in a 2010 study. “It has been repeatedly argued that the perception of control is not only desirable, but it is likely a psychological and biological necessity.”

That’s a whopper, right? A biological necessity! Scientists think that it started with our need to survive. Dr. Dan Siegel writes in his book, Mindsight, “From an evolutionary standpoint, if we are in control of our environment, then we have a far better chance of survival.”

So it seems our need for control is in our biology, but in today’s world, it’s less about survival and more about personal freedom and self-determination. We have to feel like we can exert some type of control over our destinies, or why bother?

“If people did not believe they were capable of successfully producing desired results,” write Lauren A. Leotti and colleagues, “there would be very little incentive to face even the slightest challenge.”

Psychologists have discovered that the degree to which we feel we have control over our work and our lives is a powerful factor in mental and physical health and a strong predictor of achievements in life.

Having a sense of control is associated with better career prospects and job performance, while a lack of control is associated with an increased risk in psychiatric disorders like anxiety and depression. That’s why if you’re stuck in a dead-end job where you feel you have little to no control over what you do, you can start to feel down and out.

It’s also why if you begin to feel like you have no control over where your writing career is going, you can feel the same way. If you’re not careful, those feelings can grow until you start to believe that no matter what you do, you won’t be able to reach your goals.

“[W]e need to feel a sense of control over ourselves and our lives,” writes Deb Knobelman, Ph.D. “It’s a normal and necessary part of the human experience. And if we believe that others have more power over our life, it creates a lot of anxiety and depression.”

So if we accept that we need to feel a sense of control over what we can do with our writing lives, and we also know that there are many factors in the publishing industry and beyond that can rob us of that sense of control, what can we do to empower ourselves once again?

How We Try to Regain Lost Control

I read an interesting study recently that helped me think of control differently. Researchers from London Business School and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University looked into this issue of control by conducting several experiments.

They began by having participants read a description of a boss or an employee and then think how they would feel in those different roles. That meant that some participants were made to feel powerful (those in the role of the boss), and others to feel powerless (those in the role of an employee).

Then the participants were told they could purchase eyeglasses or ice cream from a store that had three options or a store that had 15 options. The participants who had been in the role of employee—lacking power—were hungry for choice, and were willing to drive farther or wait longer to access the store with more options.

In another set of experiments, the researchers found that when people were deprived of choice, their longing for power increased, and they expressed a greater desire to occupy a high-power position.

What the researchers were finding here was that we try to fulfill our need for control in two ways:

  • By attaining power
  • By gaining more choice

When lacking power, the participants would seek out more choices. When lacking choice, they would seek out more powerful positions. Additional experiments found that people could be content with either one, or both, but having neither resulted in significant dissatisfaction.

“People instinctively prefer high to low power positions,” said study author M. Ena Inesi. “Similarly, it feels good when you have choice, and it doesn’t feel good when choice is taken away.”

Beyond adding to the evidence that control is important in our lives, this study shows us that we have options. If you’re feeling a lack of control over your destiny as a writer, you can go one of two ways: try to gain power somehow, or exercise your power of choice.

“Their logic is straightforward,” writes Art Markman in Psychology Today. “If the goal that is important to people is control, then in situations in which people do not have power, they should seek situations that give them more choices. In situations in which people have limited choices, they should seek power.”

Use the Power of Choice to Increase Motivation and Energy

It’s tough to try to gain control in your writing life through power. Unless you’re promoted to CEO of a large publishing company or something similar, you’re going to remain a single creative individual working to get your writing noticed by readers in a highly competitive marketplace—not a very powerful position.

But as a writer, you do have a lot of choices. Exercising your power of choice helps you regain control which can make a powerful difference in your career—particularly if you start making good choices more often.

“To choose, is to express a preference, and to assert the self,” write Leotti and colleagues. “Each choice – no matter how small – reinforces the perception of control and self-efficacy.”

Recently I had an experience that demonstrated this concept to me clearly, and it involved this site! As a result of changes at the hosting company (mostly updates), the site started experiencing some problems.

Through a series of calls to the company and some research on my own, I discovered that even after I solved some of the issues with the hosting company, my theme was no longer working well with the updates.

After a series of contacts with the company that designed the theme and installing theme updates that failed to fix the issue, I was feeling powerless. My interactions with the theme company had been frustrating and had taken longer than expected, and still, I was without a solution.

One weekend on a whim I started installing various themes on the dashboard and checking out the live previews. They all looked fine. The problems I was experiencing with my current theme vanished with the use of other themes. I suddenly realized I had another choice in front of me—I could simply update the site with a new theme.

This choice would take considerable time and work that I hadn’t planned on, and it would be difficult as I was in the midst of a very busy period, but when I realized it was possible, my spirit lifted. Suddenly with this new choice, I had the power to regain control over the situation, and that made all the difference.

I spent a long weekend of work installing the new theme. The result was an updated, improved look for the site and a much happier writer…me!

How often do you exercise your power of choice to improve your situation in your writing life? Considering how well it works and how quickly it can improve your mood, motivation, and mindset, it’s probably time to do it more often.

How Writers Can Regain Control In Their Lives

Below are a few examples of situations where you might feel a loss of power—and how you can use the power of choice to regain that power once again.

1. You’ve received lots of rejections on your story and you’re feeling powerless to find a traditional publisher.

There are a lot of choices you can make in this situation. First, you can choose to do more research. There are more publishers out there than you may realize. Sure, they’re probably not big publishers, but if you are committed to finding a traditional publisher, it takes quite a while to exhaust all your options.

Second, you can decide to determine why your manuscript is failing to gain traction. You can choose to hire a book doctor or editor to help you discover and improve the flaws in the manuscript or to create a stronger query letter.

Third, you can decide to go to a writer’s conference and pitch your idea to agents and editors there, as that may get you closer to a “yes.”

Fourth, if you’ve already taken all the steps you need to create the best story possible (you’ve had it edited, for example), you can choose to self-publish the book, putting all of the control back on your desk.

2. You’ve tried several marketing tactics yet your books aren’t selling as well as you like.

I find that the best first choice in any situation is always to learn more if you can. How might you open up more choices for yourself?

In this case, it could be that there are more options for marketing than you are aware of (definitely likely), so your choice could be to go to a conference, take an online workshop, or otherwise explore the other marketing approaches available to you.

Second, you could choose to make a change in your author platform. Explore your niche, and see where you can bring more of your strengths to the fore. (If you need more help with this, see Writer Get Noticed!)

Third, you could decide to focus less on marketing for a while and more on producing more books. (This is an especially good choice if you have only one or two books published.)

3. You have tried to make writing a priority in your life, but other things keep interfering and you’re feeling defeated.

Life can make it tough to stick with your writing routine. Family issues, financial problems, job losses, lack of support, and more can all make it seem like you’re bashing your head against a wall.

Exercising your power of choice can help. Choose to accept that your life right now is not as calm as you’d like it to be. That single choice can go a long way toward easing your stress and anxiety.

Then choose to find those small areas where you can exert more control. What time of day most belongs to you? Choose to devote at least part of that time to writing, so you can begin to make progress again.

You may also choose to reach out to other writers who are struggling with the same issue, so you can support each other.

Put Your Imagination to Work on Better Choices for Yourself

These are just a few examples of how the power of choice can help you manage the writing life at whatever stage you may be in. We just have to remember to exercise this power more often.

How are you feeling about your writing world today? If your answer isn’t “ecstatic”, what choices can you make that might improve the situation? Put your imagination to work, and let it lead you to greater success down the road.

Do you have an example of using the power of choice to improve your writing life?


Sources
Inesi, M. E., Botti, S., Dubois, D., Rucker, D. D., & Galinsky, A. D. (2011). Power and Choice. Psychological Science, 22(8), 1042-1048. doi:10.1177/0956797611413936

Leotti, L. A., Iyengar, S. S., & Ochsner, K. N. (2010). Born to choose: the origins and value of the need for control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(10), 457-463. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2010.08.001

Leotti, L. A., Iyengar, S. S., & Ochsner, K. N. (2010). Born to choose: the origins and value of the need for control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(10), 457-463. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2010.08.001

Ly, V., Wang, K. S., Bhanji, J., & Delgado, M. R. (2019). A Reward-Based Framework of Perceived Control. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 13. doi:10.3389/fnins.2019.00065

Markman, A. (2014, September 14). Choice and Power Are Both Means of Controlling Our Lives. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201109/choice-and-power-are-both-means-controlling-our-lives

Nobelman, Ph.D., D. (2019, June 10). You Need To Believe That You Have Control Of Your Life To Be Happy. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@knobelman/you-need-to-believe-that-you-have-control-of-your-life-to-be-happy-6183c20d4b40=

Siegel, D. (2008). The Need for a Sense of Control. Retrieved from http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/control.htm