POSITIVE SELF ESTEEM AND WRITING

Which comes first? Positive self esteem or "good" writing.   I put good in quotes to indicate that often good is a matter of someone's judgment, not an internal quality of the writing.   As far as self esteem goes, there are different views on this matter.   Some say it is not possible to do good writing unless you have positive self esteem.  Others say that as you develop your writing your positive self esteem grows.

The dilemma is that depending on what you believe, you either will or will not write.  And, if writing is an important activity for you to engage in (according to you), and if you believe you do not have positive self esteem, writing will not happen anytime soon if you wait for positive self esteem to occur.   There is a common saying that you can't write well unless you write badly.   In this instance, keeping this saying in mind can help you take pen to paper, or your fingers to the computer.

One of the major purposes of my writing telegroup is to allow people who want to write and haven't for a long time or whohaven't done their own creative projects, to get themselves going in the context of a safe and supportive environment.  Often the participants will talk about not believing that their writing is good, or that their self esteem is really poor.

It is an extremely gratifying (I can't use too many superlatives) experience to see people grow into their true writing selves.  To hear their own writing voices.  And, to see that whether they believed they had poor self esteem, or whether they believed their writing was bad, eventually all developed as writers that they believed had both positive self esteem and good writing.

For information on how to overcome writer's block, see Overcome Writer's Block Easily.