The Crippling Fear of Inadequacy

It's time once again for National Novel Writing Month, and I can't seem to decide whether I'm excited or terrified.


On the one hand, I feel plenty ready. The book I'm writing this year is a sequel to something else I've already written, so I already know and love my characters. I know what new characters and plotlines I want to introduce. I know from writing the first story that this story comes easily to me, and that the narrator is both easy and fun to write as. I'm feeling competitive, ready to outdo (or at the very least attempt to outdo) my previous writing accomplishments and the friends of mine who are doing their own novels alike. BRING IT ON, NOVEMBER!


On the other hand, November's only thirty days. And I still have school and lots of books I want to read. And a lot of things are supposed to happen in this book, so who knows whether I can get them all written in such a short amount of time? And I've been having a lot of trouble with writing lately.


That last one might be obvious. If you scroll down, you'll see my latest post, a short story I finished writing yesterday after working on it for several days. If you scroll down a little farther, you'll see that my last post before that was on September 3rd.


The extent of my writing over the past few months is as follows: I wrote that last post on September 3rd. I wrote the short story over the last ten days or so of October. I wrote another short story, this one a school assignment that ended up being about 16 pages long and not quite 7,000 words, over the course of October. Over the course of last Sunday and Monday, I finally finished last year's NaNo book, writing about 8,700 words in two days (and yes, I was extremely proud of myself).


That probably seems like a lot. But it doesn't feel like a lot to me, because it took me an entire month to write a short story that was shorter than the amount I added in my book in just two days. And I went almost two months without blogging. And I know how much I struggled to write both the school short story and the one I posted yesterday. And I know why I'm having all this trouble.


The reason I haven't blogged in two months, despite the fact that more than once I came across something in fiction I felt like ranting about, is that I didn't want to post any regular posts until I'd finished the posts from the short story challenge I started over the summer. And the reason that it's been taking me so long to finish that can be found in the subject line of this post: the crippling fear of inadequacy.


The thing is, I'm afraid of disappointing people. I worry that my stories won't live up to the expectations of the people giving me prompts. It's the same reason it took me so long to write that story for school. I'd been given an assignment to write something by my favorite teacher ever, and I couldn't shake the completely unfounded feeling that if the story I wrote wasn't amazing she'd feel let down. (My working excuse for the delay while I was writing it was that I hated all my characters, but then I realized that characters very similar to the ones I supposedly hated had made appearances in my other non-assigned writings without really slowing me down at all.)


And then Sunday came, and I had to finish last year's book, and the only person I could conceivably disappoint was myself, and suddenly I was done and my book had magically become 23 pages longer than it had been before.


Thus last year is behind me and I can boldly go into a new November.


There's just one small problem.


The story I finished on Monday is a fantasy story. It features a completely made-up land with its own people and language and mythology and history, its own social stigmas and prejudices. The characters face danger and death, betrayal and fear. There're moments of poetic writing and character growth. It's not actually as good as I'm making it sound...... but I think it's pretty dang good.


The story I started writing at midnight is about a modern teenage girl with few social graces who is attempting to adjust to the idea of having a best friend, a massively foreign concept to her. She bumbles around, sassing people and trying to cope and accidentally making more friends along the way. It's a fun story, she's a fun character and, as previously stated, a blast to write; but compared to last year's endeavor, it feels a bit...... insubstantial.


My concern now is that all my friends and maybe even some family members or teachers will read last year's book and think it's good and ask to see my other stuff, and then be confused and bored by my newer manuscript and its lack of meat.


Once again, I'm being crippled by a fear of inadequacy.


*Sigh*


There's a stereotype out there that teenage girls have no self-esteem. I've heard teenage girls described as having "enough insecurities to fill a house". And some days, I feel like I'm upholding the stereotype. But where most girls presumably fret about their appearance, or their social status, or their lack of a boyfriend, I fret about my writing. No matter how many times or how many ways I'm told it's good, there's almost always a voice in the back of my head silently arguing. "But the ending was stupid." "But I didn't flesh that one plot point out enough." "But I'm so rambly." "But what about that one incredibly lame line of dialogue I insisted on putting in and then immediately regretted?" "You're just saying that because you don't want to hurt my feelings."


The voice with the fear-of-inadequacy problem is even worse. "You realize you use the exact same dialogue device in, like, everything you write, right? Someday someone's going to notice that." "This isn't up to your usual standard. Are you even trying?" "Why is this taking so long? Normally you don't have this much trouble." "Ugh, this is awful. You can't let anyone read this. For some reason they all think you're good at writing. They would be so disappointed by this."


Those who have read my non-blog writing are often besieged with demands of feedback. This is why. I get very frustrated by my own self-confidence issues, and sometimes positive comments will lodge in my brain and fight them back for days, even weeks. On Monday, as soon as I'd finished, I sent last year's NaNo to a couple good friends, and ever since I've been anxiously waiting for comments that I know aren't going to be arriving until at least mid-November. Because if they love it, and like the characters that I intended for them to like, and get excited by the things that are supposed to be exciting, it'll make my whole week. And if they don't....... well, I don't exactly know how I'll feel, but at least I'll have the opinion of someone besides myself to refer to.


I get that I'm not alone in this. Many great artists had it much worse than I do, believing their masterpieces were worthless. I actually find that comforting.


There's a Sherlock Holmes movie called They Might Be Giants that was made in the 1970s. It's about an ardent Sherlock Holmes fan who copes with an emotional trauma by forgetting his real life and believing he's Sherlock. His brother forces him to see a young psychologist, conveniently named Dr. Watson. Shenanigans ensue.


There's one bit in it that I was much amused by, when "Sherlock" is trying to convince Watson to come solve crimes with him. He says something like, "I understand that you probably feel unworthy to be my companion because of my massive intellect. But you're not! You're perfectly adequate! Just repeat this to yourself: 'I am adequate!'"


It's meant to be funny (and it is). But I'm finding it's not as easy as it sounds to say even those words and believe them.


I am adequate.


I am adequate.


*Takes deep breath*


C'mon, November.


Let's do this.


~Pearl Clayton