What You Really Need to do as a Discouraged Writer

Are you a discouraged writer right now?

Did you get a rejection or bad review and feel like you didn’t know what you were doing?

Have you thought about quitting writing because you aren’t getting the results you hoped for?

Or have you been in the middle of your novel, gotten stuck, and been unable to get unstuck, no matter how you tried?

Chances are, if you’re a writer, you’ve been discouraged at least once along the way. It can be a really dark, helpless feeling, and when you’re going through it, it can be hard to imagine that you’ll ever be a happy, fulfilled writer again.

I’ve been through times like these more than once, and I’ve learned a few things that may help you the next time you’re facing this unwelcome condition.

What Does it Mean to be a Discouraged Writer?

First, let’s look at what “discouraged” really means.

You’re probably familiar with definitions like “having lost confidence and enthusiasm,” or “disheartened.”

But one you may not have thought about lately is Webster’s first definition: to deprive of courage.

All of these apply when you’re a discouraged writer, but I think this last one can be most helpful to examine. It takes courage to be a writer in so many ways:

• You have to have courage to write anything in the first place—to believe you have something important to say.
• You have to have courage to submit your work for critiques, and courage to face those critiques.
• You have to have courage to submit your writing to agents and publishers, as you could be rejected.
• You have to have courage to publish a book, as it opens you up to potential criticism from strangers.
• You have to have courage to market and stand behind your book, to claim it as your own, and to take any criticisms that may come your way.

As A Discouraged Writer, You May Have Lost Your Courage

If you’re a discouraged writer, you could say you’ve lost your courage, and what is the opposite of courage?

Fear.

Which opens up a new way of looking at the condition—you are trapped in fear. What could you be afraid of? I love what author Pam Stucky says about this:

“The further away we are from courage, the closer we are to our fears. Not so much the disappointment that we haven’t achieved our goals, but more the fear that we never will.”

Losing your courage, then, jeopardizes your entire writing process and career.

Normally, that would be a really alarming thing, but when we’re discouraged, we tend to feel more disheartened than alarmed. And what does “disheartened” mean?

To lose hope.

A Discouraged Writer Has Given Up Hope

This one hits the nail on the head, doesn’t it? A writer always has hope that her writing will improve, that she will find readers, that the book will find a publisher, and that the career will build and grow.

A discouraged writer no longer has hope for any of these things. He has given up hope.

He is like the lost traveler marooned on an island who douses the fire, lets the tide wash away the “help” signs, and turns inward toward the island, no longer believing he will ever be rescued.

Giving up his pursuit of rescue, he settles for whatever life he can eek out on the island.

A discouraged writer may do the same. She may give up the hours spent writing, give up the attempts to market, give up her entire pursuit of a writing life, and settle for doing something else that she finds less satisfying and fulfilling.

She’s lost her courage, settled into fear, and lost her hope.

The question is, how can she reverse the situation?

Why Writers Shouldn’t Try to Rush Past Discouragement

Before we jump into solutions, let me suggest something to you—a period of discouragement can be useful to a writer.

Yes, it’s awful. Uncomfortable. Painful. It’s the opposite of fun.

But when I look back on my discouragements, I realize one thing…and no, it’s not that those periods made me stronger as a writer, though they did. It is true that the more tough times you go through, the stronger, more dedicated you become to your craft.

And that’s not a small benefit. We all need to find out if we’re really in this for the long haul or not, and sometimes going through a discouraging time is the only way to do that.

It helps you learn more about yourself as a creative person.

But I’m not talking about that, specifically. I’m talking about something a little deeper.

The Question to Ask When You’re Feeling Discouraged

When you go through discouragements, they force you to reexamine one question: Why are you doing this?

And that’s an important reexamination to make, because the reality of a thing can often be much different than the imagined thing.

What did you think when you first imagined being a writer? Did you imagine bestselling books, sold-out book signings, your name on the spine on the bookshelf?

Could you see your picture in a magazine or your name on a radio show or podcast? Imagine enough money coming in to support your next writing project?

We’ve all dream of the charmed writing life. A select few achieve it, but that number is growing smaller every day.

Meanwhile, when you face a time of discouragement—when you realize your dreams aren’t coming true as you hoped, or that your skills aren’t improving as quickly as you thought—it forces you to take a moment to step back and re-evaluate.

Why are you doing this?

The optimal outcome of a period of discouragement is a richer, deeper, and more lasting answer to that question.

It’s one reason why I would caution you not to be too quick to try to snap yourself out of it, before you’ve had a chance to reflect and hear what the experience is trying to tell you, or teach you.

Discouragement Can be a Reality Check for a Writer

Maybe you went into writing thinking certain things would happen, and they haven’t panned out.

You’re discouraged because you’re not where you thought you’d be at this point. You’ve put in the time and the effort (you thought, though usually much more of both are required to establish a writing career), and you need to re-evaluate to see if this is still something you want to do.

Every situation is different, every writer is different, and every discouraging time has it’s own inciting event (rejection, poor review, poor sales, writer’s block, etc.), but the main thing is that it creates a crisis of the creative soul—one you can solve only through deep reflection.

A Writing Career is Tougher Than Most People Think

In general, writing and creating a writing career is much more difficult than most people think it is.

There are so many facets to it, so many things to learn, and so much experience that is required. You need time to become a better writer, practice, discipline, and instruction to help improve your skills.

And you need the courage and the fortitude to keep at it for a very long time—probably for longer than you thought was necessary to see results.

A period of discouragement is like a reality check: Hey, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

That’s okay. We humans have to learn these things, and this is a common lesson, because in truth, most things are harder to do than they look from the outside.

And trust me, bemoaning the editors for not seeing your talent, or the publishers for not being more open to new voices, or readers for not reading enough, or the market for not recognizing quality work, will not help one bit. Reality is as it is, and you can do little to change it.

At this point, then, the only thing you can do is face the reality and decide: Do I want to keep doing this?

How to Restore a Discouraged Writer’s Hope and Courage

Life is too short to continue pursuing a goal if your heart isn’t in it.

There’s nothing wrong with giving writing a break for a bit. Go do something else if you feel so inclined. Maybe the urge to write will return sometime in the future, or maybe not.

Either way, if it’s not bringing you the results you wanted, and you can find no other reason to continue, you should definitely feel perfectly okay in leaving it behind, at least for a while.

Can You Leave Writing Behind?

This another really good way to get to know yourself—another gift that discouragement gives you.

Can you leave writing behind?

I encourage you to give it a whirl. I’ve done it a time or two, proclaimed that I was done with writing. I’ve enjoyed the momentary relief of saying that and of letting it all go for a while.

Sometimes that’s all you need to restore your hope and courage, and to come back to the page ready to try again. A break like that can help reveal that you really do enjoy writing for writing’s sake, and that anything else is truly icing on the cake.

Hey, discouragement, thanks for that! Now I know that I’m a writer, do or die.

What if you decide you can’t leave writing behind, but you still feel disheartened by what you’re trying to do?

Then you need to revisit your reasons for doing it.

You could be expecting too much from your writing. Hoping it’s going to earn you enough money to quit your day job, get you the attention that you crave, or win you awards so you can feel good about yourself.

There’s nothing wrong with these desires, but discouragement gives you a chance to revisit them, and to put them into context—they are desires, personal desires, and you are expecting writing to fulfill them, when maybe you should be looking elsewhere for that fulfillment.

Writing Gives Us a Mirror

I find it amazing how writing gives us a mirror through which to see ourselves.

When we expect writing to do certain things for us, and those things don’t happen, if we’re smart, we take the time to look closely, and to see why we want those things.

Why did we hope that writing would bring them to us? How can we ease the ache for those things in other ways? How can we give ourselves the things we’re trying to get from writing and from readers?

My discouragements have forced me to face things like these in myself, and that’s been a positive thing.

By facing everything I was hoping to get (and didn’t get early on) from writing, I was able to find more peace within myself and come back to writing with new intentions that I now find work so much better for me, and have created a much more fulfilling and rewarding writing career.

You may find different answers from your reflections, but I’ll share mine in case they may be helpful.

What I Found as a Discouraged Writer

After going through many discouraging times, a few where I gave up writing for at least a little while, I found out that yes, I want to keep writing, but also, that I was expecting too much from it.

At that point, I changed my attitude and my intentions in two ways:

1. In my fiction writing, I now focus on enjoying myself, telling the stories that I feel need to be told, and telling them to the best of my ability, with a goal of continuing to get better as I go. Whether the books sell or not, I’m satisfied with doing these things.
2. In my non-fiction writing and writing-related projects, my new goal is I’m always asking myself, “How can I help people? How can my writing lift someone up, give someone knowledge he can use, or better someone’s life?”

These two intentions have worked brilliantly for me. I’d particularly recommend number two as a really good solution to discouragement.

If you can find a way to help others through your writing, you’ll be more likely to find readers, which is what we all really want, right?

Or maybe you can find a way to be at peace creating your art no matter what else happens in the outside world. That doesn’t mean you don’t keep trying to sell, or get readers. It simply means your happiness, and your productivity as a writer, don’t suffer depending on the results.

It takes awhile to come to this sort of feeling—to really feel it, not just say you do. And in truth, it takes something else, too: discouragement.

Try This

The next time you go through a discouraging time, use it.

—to learn more about yourself and your commitment to writing.

—to find out where you really want to go from here, and what you want to do with your skills.

—to redirect your path.

Once you feel your courage and your hope return, you’ll likely find you’re much happier with your new direction.

How do you deal with being discouraged as a writer?

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Source
Pam Stucky, “What to do When You’re Discouraged: A Return to Courage,” Huffington Post, December 6, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/pam-stucky/what-to-do-when-youre-dis_b_7574292.html.