My Top Four Books for the Despairing Writer

Dealing with Doubt

If you’re a writer, or artist of any kind, the odds are you will have struggled with doubt. You will know only too well those days when you come close to giving in and giving up. In my world it's quite possible, within the short space of a few hours, for me to veer from being in love with writing and what it brings to my life, to feeling paralysed with doubt. What’s the point of my writing? It’s not good enough. I’m not good enough. Other people are much more successful...

Is 10 am and I’m in the Townhall Café, in my local town. I like to come here and work, even though it can be very busy. I bag a table, order my coffee and breakfast, get out my notebook and pen and set myself up to write. As the place fills up, as the noise grows around me, I put my head down and write, oblivious There is something about the noise that helps and I never fail to come away with something new in my notebook. It has become a regular part of my writing practice.

I drive home, pleased with the work I’ve done, but within an hour, back in the house, I’ve hit the slough of despond.

1pm. The why am I writing, doubts, crowd in, often provoked by a quick scroll through Instagram, reading about the latest prize-winning books and authors. More fool me, you may say. I should put my phone away. And is writing really a competition? Sadly, at times, these days, it begins to feel as if it is.

To move the dial and flip me back to a happier place, I get out my stash of writing books. I have quite a collection now. Some are more craft focused than others, but at times like these I rely on those where I know I can find what I need, where I can find what I already know but need reminding of: that all of my worries about not being good enough and not competing in the big world of publishing are irrelevant to my work and the creative life I want to live. They have no place there.

In this category of, life coach for the despairing writer, here are the four books I turn to for this reassurance, and which also offer valuable insights into the writing craft.

Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott, is funny patient and wise. She has so many good things to say, not only about getting started, about plot, character, point of view etc. but also about purpose and publication.

'Even if only the people in your writing group, read your memoirs or stories or novel, even if you only wrote your stories, so that one day, your children would know what life was like when you were a child and you knew the name of every dog in town, still to have written your version is an honourable thing to have done.’

'Publication is not going to change your life or solve your problems. Publication will not make you more confident, more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer.'

The title comes from the story she tells of her brother who was trying to get a report written on birds, a report that he'd had three months to write, but had done no work on. It was due the next day. He was ‘sat at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder, paper, and pencils and unopened books on birds.’ Her father sat down beside him, put his arm around him and said, ‘bird by bird buddy just take it bird by bird.’ 

In my experience, being overwhelmed often comes with the territory of embarking on a new project. There is too much material. I haven’t written enough words. I don’t know where it’s going. I don’t know if it’s any good etc. etc. All we can really do is take it, bird by bird. Which is very much how I find I’m approaching the memoir work I’m doing now, about my childhood; fragment by fragment, brick by brick building the house of self.

Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg is the first book on writing I owned. It's a book to get you started on a writing journey and to keep with you throughout. A book, I come back to again and again to refresh what I know and remind me of important things.

'Trust in what you love, continue to do it and it will take you where you need to go.'

'Take chances you will succeed if you are fearless of failure.'

‘Don't listen to doubt it leads no place but to pain and negativity. It is the same with your critic who picks at you while you are trying to write… Don't pay attention to those voices. There is nothing helpful there. Instead have a tenderness and determination towards your writing, a sense of humour and a deep patience that you are doing the right thing.’

There is advice on the craft of writing, and establishing a writing practice, as well as many unique writing prompts. It’s written in very short chapters with great titles like: Man Eats Car, Writing is not a McDonald’s Hamburger, Don’t Use Writing to Get Love. It's fun, funny and very Zen.

If I had to choose one book on writing to keep by me, the one I could not do without, it would be, Still Writing by Danny Shapiro. My well-thumbed copy has underlining and notes in the margin on most pages. It's the early chapters that sustain me most, that I go back to when I have doubts or when I am beginning something new, when my inner censor is sitting on my shoulder telling me its a waste of time, that I won't be able to pull it off, that somebody already did it better.

'The more we have at stake, the harder it is to make the leap into writing. The more we think about who's going to read it, what they're going to think, how many copies will be printed...the further away we are from accomplishing anything alive on the page.'

'The only remedy the only cure for the writer is writing. It isn't about the project it's about the practice. Whether in the midst of a serious piece of work or just taking notes the page is where we come to meet ourselves.'

' ...sit down tomorrow, and the next day and the next day, not to start something new, not with the expectations or fantasies of what you might or might not accomplish, but to stay engaged with the practice of writing... For eighty years Pablo Casals, one of the greatest cellist who ever lived, began his day in the same manner. 'I go to the piano and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life and with the feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.'

Finally, Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, is a great antidote to self-doubt, though it's less about writing and the craft and more about creativity in general. Reading Elizabeth Gilbert, spending time with Big Magic is like having your own life coach, there to demystify the creative process and explain why we all have a right to live creatively.

'When I talk about creative living here, please understand I am not necessarily talking about pursuing a life that is professionally or exclusively devoted to the arts… no, when I refer to creative living, I’m speaking more broadly I’m talking about living life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than fear. It will vary widely from person to person but a creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life and expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life.’

'Your fear will always show up, especially when you’re trying to be inventive or innovative. Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear, hates uncertain outcomes.’

'You have treasures hidden within you, extraordinary treasures, and so do I, and so does everyone around us and bringing those treasures to light takes work and faith and focus and courage and hours of devotion and the clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.'

Amen!

And thanks for reading

Avril x