This week: Am I Good Enough? Edited by: fyn  
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Realize that everyone that you think is perfect feels like they're not good enough, too. ~~Alessia Cara
If your mom asks you to do the dishes, do not pull out your pirate attitude. But if someone tells you you're not good enough, says your dreams are too lofty, or claims there is no room in showbiz for a dancing violinist - well then, by all means, pull out your eye patch, my friend, and take to the high seas. ~~Lindsey Stirling
You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens. ~~Louise Hay
You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously. ~~Sophia Bush
And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. ~~John Steinbeck
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~~Ralph Waldo Emerson
You are good enough as you are. You have nothing to prove to anybody. ~~Maya Angelou
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I can't tell you how many times I've been told in responses to reviews that people don't think they are good enough. These are from folks who are trying! These are from writers who are working their backsides off. Maybe they are still learning. Learning is good. Maybe they are still finding their niche, their style, or their form. This is all part of the process. Maybe a Pulitzer isn't in their near future. Who cares? Honestly? If someone wants to write, enjoys writing, has a desire or need to write, then that is precisely what they should do.
Writing is like medicine or law. One practices it. One learns. One grows. And like anything one does, the more you do it, the longer you do it: the more you learn, the better you become and you get progressively better! Is there a writer out there who thinks everything they write is stellar? I think not. And, in truth, if one reaches that point? They will stop learning, they will stop growing and they will sit in their writerly little rut until the end of time.
Writing is work. No two ways about it. Writing takes thought, effort, blood, guts, revision, editing, and tearing your heart out. It's rewriting and rewriting and playing with words over and over again. Until it clicks. Until it gels. Until it all falls together. Writing is scrapping entire chapters that went in the wrong direction. Writing is discovering that something way back in Chapter Two won't work when you are in Chapter Forty and something needs to be changed and having to go back and fix it and every single ramification that's transpired since Chapter Two. Writing is frustrating, time-consuming, stressful, exhilarating, and exhausting. Writing is delightful, energizing, exciting and devastating! No one ever has been a stellar writer without fits and starts, detours, worn-out delete keys, and erasers. Could you pick up a violin and play like a master? No, of course not. Can you build a house? Probably not, at least, not one that would be safe to write in. Anything worth doing requires that learning curve, taking classes, practicing, tearing down, and rebuilding.
BUT! Just because you are learning, figuring it out, trying new things, and doing your best, thinking you are not good enough is just plain wrong. Do you want to be better? Of course. We all do. And we get there by doing, writing, writing, reading, and then writing some more. Even then, there is no end in sight because we STILL want to be better.
It kills me when I review something that is truly good, but perhaps not quite there yet, and needs a bit more playing with and a writer responds with the e comments that it is still in process and is very willing to look at suggestions (both of which are absolutely fine!) and then, follows it up with insecurities about whether or not it is any good at all. I'll happily spend an hour (when I have said hour)
going over a good piece and giving suggestions/corrections. Just because there is still more to do to anyone's writing, it does not mean t isn't any good. It just means it isn't finished ... yet.
It has been my experience in life that if you feel you are 'not good enough' or 'not enough', or that you are (in any way) less than you actually ARE, then you will, indeed, be. The facts are that anyone with determination, desire, and umph! can write well. You just learn how. Do some folks seem to have an innate talent? I'm sure. But it is just as likely that they've spent years and years honing their craft! Will/can you become a best-selling author? Maybe, maybe not. Often that lovely title is more about being in the right place at the right time and with the right material.
Be you. Do you. You are. And that is all that is necessary.
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For Authors: August 17, 2022 Issue [#11513]
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