WRITER'S BLOCK: FEELING COMPETENT

There's a definite difference between feeling competent and being competent.  As a writing coach I've worked with a number of writers who were competent writers and simply could not feel competent.  In reality, we had to work more on their feelings of competency than on their competence.

In some ways learning the craft of writing is not hard even though the work of writing can be arduous.  Even despite inherent passion and the joy of it.  I have found that with persistence… always a quality a writer or wanna be writer must have (or develop… I discussed this in an earlier post)… feelings of competency do emerge.

Once a writer feels competent, they find it a lot easier to talk about their work and to promote their work if becoming publicly visible is one of their goals.

Feeling competent often does not originate in the activity of writing.  Rather, it is a feeling about the self that develops in the whole person, hopefully growing up and makes its appearance in the person's writing as it makes it appearance in other areas of their life.

What's important about this is that even if a person does not feel competent in other parts of their lives, they can develop it in their writing lives.  Often, I've seen this feeling spread to other areas of the writer's life.

So why not be persistent and develop the feeling of competence?