Many of the people that come to me for advice as a writing coach describe a state of mind which circles around the notion of losing, or having lost, their confidence as a writer. Many don’t use that precise expression, and mercifully, none have expressed the concept of writer’s block (which I simply don’t accept as a thing). But losing your confidence as a writer is a real and tangible problem: the first thing we need to do is find out why.
Reasons: You, or someone else.
It might be the case that you have gotten out of the writing habit, and by that, I mean very specifically the scholarly research publication type of writing habit. This is very different from the email, feedback, supervision, blog writing, presentation / speech writing, grant writing, text book writing or report writing habit, all of which have their own particular tropes and genres, and are very very different from scholarly research publication writing. If you continually eschew this type of writing in favour of all or some or one of the other types, there is no way that you can maintain your writing confidence in relation to journal articles and /or monographs. You might have gotten out of this habit on purpose (it is just so hard, I can’t face it) or by accident (you became an administrator-teacher) or by design (you were sidelined into other roles or your writing and research time was stolen from your workload matrix). We can take control of all these situations if we really want, but sometimes, we would all rather do the easy thing. The easy thing is not scholarly publishing.
Writing scholarly research for journals and monographs is considered the gold standard, is heavily policed, and is difficult to do. It needs to be a habit to maintain confidence in it like any difficult thing. And by a habit I mean regular soft and hard contact with it, day in, day out. If you have left it two months, or three, or 12 months or 5 years, it is an uphill mountain to climb. The longer the absence, the higher the mountain. It can be done, but without help, it will be painful indeed. The longer the absence, the more work you have to put in to unwire your now hardwired behaviours of avoidance to re-engage with the writing habit.
It might be the case that someone, somewhere in your scholarly life has (intentionally or not) destroyed your confidence through insensitive and unprofessional feedback, criticism or ‘advice’. When we are being subjected to such people - and we have all been subjected to such people - honestly, our bodily responses don’t lie. We know when someone is trying to help, but their words are bruising our egos, and we know when someone is behaving like an asshole. In the moment we KNOW it. But afterwards, it is easy to let that encounter settle, become authoritative, then fester, then be obsessed over (overtly or internally) until it undoes every shred of confidence we ever possessed. Sometimes, people really are out to get you in academia because they are painfully inadequate and insecure. Pity them. An honest internal inventory should point the way: real, or memorex? as those adds used to say.
Fixing it
Unpicking such damage is hard psychological work and has to be faced. Without it, at the slightest sign of difficulty, reluctant writers will fall straight back into their now well established patterns of behaviour and avoidance. Sometimes we can face this head on by ourselves, sometimes we need to approach it softly, over time, and with a certain amount of side eye. Nonetheless, face it we must. Only then can you really start to build new practices of engagement with your writing that will re-establish confidence. Establish that you will keep showing up. You will keep your word to yourself because only you actually cares about your writing.
Turning this around takes courage. It takes a lot of courage. Coaches can provide you with the tools to unpick this damage and reinstate your writing habit (one that actually works for you) but they cannot give you courage. That is yours alone, and so is the ultimate progress you make daily in re-engaging with the difficult task of scholarly writing. It is hard to take responsibility and decide to do things differently, but for many academics, it is harder still to give up on that side of their professional identity where expertise, voice, agency and making a contribution reside. Research is important - it motivates us, and is a real privilege of academic life to find out new things and tell the world about it. Don’t give this up lightly, and certainly, don’t let anyone take that away from you.
Small steps forward
If this sounds like you, please don’t try to run full pelt up that mountain this week or next. Like an endurance event, writing requires build up and small repeated ‘training sessions’ before you can start putting serious time in, lest you do yourself a mischief. You might be severely, moderately or lightly out of shape. So start by unearthing something half started, or if that doesn’t motivate you, start something new that feel excited by. Commit to new practices, new ways of researching and writing, schedule reading, writing and research sessions. Engage for small amounts of time every day, start out with the simple tasks, not the blank sheet of paper. Check out the free resources on this blog to give you ideas of how to do specific things like plan projects and execute them. There is lots of help out there to re-engage with writing, like writing retreats and groups. Just don’t forget to ask yourself how and why you became a reluctant writer. All progress starts from there.