confidence

Keeping (and Losing) the Faith

April 5, 2019 By Cathy Yardley 25 Comments

I recently moved from a home on the outskirts of Seattle to a very small town in a rural area, six hours away. Gearing up for selling our old house, buying our new house, and then moving took up most of last year. The year prior to that, I had a different set of challenges. I’d been diagnosed with breast cancer, fortunately in early stages, and it had taken up a good chunk of the year getting things like surgery and radiation handled. Both years meant taking a hit on my writing and my coaching work.

Over the course of all of this, my mojo went missing. My writing was definitely a step off. Hell, my whole life was a few bubbles off plumb.

I was having a crisis of confidence.

I was missing my faith.

If there’s one key component in a writer’s toolbox, it’s faith. Faith is the invisible fuel that propels us forward in the face of critique and rejection. It’s the scaffolding that keeps us from collapsing when we see systematic injustice. It’s the rope that we cling to when we’re trapped in a blinding blizzard of doubt, convinced that our writing is wretched and we should abandon all hope and pursue something more stable, like running a three-card-monte game.

Faith is elusive, and by its very nature, illogical. You can’t learn faith. You can’t study it or buy it. You either have it, or you don’t.

So what do you do when you lose faith in your writing, and yourself? [Read more…]

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Prepare to Present with Confidence

October 28, 2017 By Guest

Please welcome author Donna Galanti to WU today! Donna, a frequent presenter, is here to share a bounty of tips that promise to make us more comfortable, efficient, and effective presenters. More about her:

Donna is the author of the paranormal suspense Element Trilogy and the children’s fantasy adventure Joshua and The Lightning Road series. She is represented by Bill Contardi of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. Donna is a contributing editor for International Thriller Writers The Big Thrill magazine and blogs with other middle grade authors at Project Middle Grade Mayhem. She’s lived from England as a child, to Hawaii as a U.S. Navy photographer. Donna enjoys teaching at conferences on the writing craft and marketing and presenting as a guest author at elementary and middle schools. She also loves building writer community. Check out her 4 Proven Steps to Connect with Readers Right Now (Before Your Book Even Comes Out!).

You can learn more about Donna on her website, and by following her on Twitter and Facebook.

Prepare to Present with Confidence

As authors, we need to be in the public eye. Often this includes presenting at conferences, being a guest author at conventions, giving school assemblies, doing group author events, and more. Saying YES to these opportunities will force you to get over your public speaking fear. You may even come to enjoy it! Doing public events can also open many new opportunities for you as an author.

I was so nervous the first time I had to give a talk that I didn’t sleep well the night before, I felt nauseous all the way to the event, and my heart raced as I thought, “What if I make a fool of myself?” That was my biggest fear. I’ve come to realize that when all those people are staring at me as I speak that they are there because they want to be there – and are interested in what I have to share.

I’ve come a long way since that first talk to a small group of 35 people at a monthly writer’s group meeting. I’ve given dozens of presentations to groups of 50 to 350, from children to adults. Speaking events are now one of my favorite things to do as an author – and I never thought I would say that!

General tips to prepare:

To prepare for an in-person audience before you even create one, take notes at other presentations you attend. They can be any type of presentation, not just one for writers. Did the presenter have a handout, a PowerPoint, or exercise? Was it quality information in a manageable chunk?

Mimic what worked for you as an attendee to deliver your own passionate, quality presentations. Provide a survey to your audience, gather emails for your newsletter, and follow up with positive responses to request a testimonial.

People love handouts! You can distribute yours after the presentation so they must stay for the duration, but do let them know up front you will be giving one out at the end so they don’t have to take so many notes. I prefer to distribute a handout in the beginning as some people use it as a reference and take notes directly on it.

Tips to combat anxiety:

Prepare! (See notes below.)
Speak slowly and with pauses, especially after questions. This also helps when your mind blanks on the next thing.
Take deep breaths or a drink of water.
If you flub up, laugh it off, engage the audience, and then get back on track. People like to know you are human, too.
Use language to include the audience when asking questions or referring to a point in your slides. For example, ask questions such as “What canwe figure out from this?” or “How did we arrive at this idea?”
Hold your script or notecards as a prop if you need to — holding something makes me feel more secure — but have practiced your talk enough so you only glance at it now and then.
Be sure to make contact with the audience around the room. Having people stare at you is unnerving, but remember they are there because they choose to be and are interested in your topic! They are soaking up all your excellent information. You can connect with them through eye contact (or look at foreheads but never the floor or ceiling), gestures with your hands, and asking rhetorical questions (and then answering them).
Think of your presentation as having a conversation, and be your true self.
Project your voice, and practice volume, pace, and pitch to make the presentation lively. You will sound more commanding and confident – and feel it. Remember, you are in charge of the room and energy. Be energetic!
Project confidence with your posture and presence. Standing behind a lectern can put a wall between you and the audience. As you speak, practice walking across the front, standing on the side, or going down the aisles to engage people. Don’t be afraid to wait until people settle down to continue, and move things along if running out of time. People will understand.
Practice so you can be sure to end on time to allow for the next presenter. If you don’t get through all your content then refer people to the handout (they may not even know you didn’t get through the content). Ask them to contact with you via email with any questions, or if you’re at a conference ask that they connect with you later during the event. Make yourself accessible.
Smile often!

Tips to create your presentation:

[Read more…]

How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome as a Writer

May 13, 2016 By Margaret Dilloway

My mother always told me not to brag. Whether this was a Japanese trait or her unique dislike, I do not know. But I do know she did not want me to draw the attention or jealousy of others. To be humble. Nonetheless, she urged me to “ichiban” (number one) anyway, albeit secretly.

This is a hard line to walk. If you get into a mindset that you should not tout your accomplishments at all, it’s easy to then think that perhaps your skills aren’t as good as you thought. You can get sucked into what’s called “imposter syndrome.”

CalTech describes “imposter syndrome” thusly: “Impostor syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence.”

I first caught this tendency in myself when someone asked me to teach a writing class several years ago. I declined. “What do I know?” I thought. I feared people would criticize me, say, “Get her out of here! She has no MFA. She’s only published two books so far, and they’re just women’s fiction! She’s not a real writer.”

[Read more…]

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Strange Bedfellows

June 22, 2015 By Therese Anne Fowler

I. Confidence

Consider the swaggering Ernest Hemingway. Even those who despise the man he was will credit him for introducing a vivid, muscular prose to the art of storytelling. You might hate the insulting misanthrope he could be but admire his keenly drawn characters, the emotional insights, the robust themes in his work. Here was a man with no shortage of confidence and a long list of accomplishments and a literary reputation that will live on well past our own lifetimes. This would seem to suggest that confidence = success. And perhaps great confidence = great success.

But most of us, no matter how expansive our egos, are not going to break new ground in the art of fiction. We are unlikely to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. Few if any of us will see our novels adopted into the English canon. Schoolwork essays relating to our stories won’t be available for purchase on the Internet.

Still, every one of us who puts a story on the page and then submits that story for publication is able to send it out it only because we believe we’re pretty good at this writing thing. We might even be better than other aspiring authors—which, when we get published, becomes a self-evident truth, given the stiff competition. The thinking goes like this: Someone published me, ergo I am a talented writer. It only stands to reason, right? The same kind of logic applies to the successful self-published author: Gobs of people are buying my book, ergo I am a talented writer.

From that first success, we labor anew for months or years over the next project, continually moving toward a goal of being read again, and the bigger our imagined audience, the more confidence we have that the product of our effort is going to be worthy of that audience’s time and attention. Big ambitions = big ego. I don’t say this pejoratively. Ego is not in itself bad.

[pullquote]Big ambitions = big ego. I don’t say this pejoratively. Ego is not in itself bad.[/pullquote]

II. Terror

When I began to draft this post, the proposal for what will be my fifth novel was on submission. My agent had been in love with it before I’d even written a word. When she read the first hundred pages, her response email began with “Wow!” Other early readers were similarly enthusiastic. Yet, the moment I turned in the final, polished materials—those hundred pages and a detailed outline for the rest—I was instantaneously certain that no one would love it, want it, publish it. On the day after my agent sent the materials to interested editors, I woke up feeling convinced that those editors who’d responded well to the pitch would have an opposite response to the materials, and now it was just a matter of waiting for my agent’s inevitable call explaining, gently, that this was one of those rare times she’d gotten it wrong. Just anxiety talking, you say? Maybe—but a version of this happened to me in early 2006. It began with excitement, then submission, then rejection, rejection, rejection… You really don’t ever know que sera.

But, all right, say your book is being published (traditionally). It stands to reason that it must be at least pretty good. A publisher picked it and paid you, after all. All is well, yes? Not so fast. Now it’s time to sweat the reviews. In traditional publishing, advance copies of the book are sent to the trade publications for review, i.e. in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus. These are supposed to be professional, objective assessments of a book, done with a view of its intended audience.

But. “Supposed to be” ≠ “are.” [Read more…]