Competence & Confidence

Last night, on my drive home from the barn, I misheard something on a podcast--and it turned out to be exactly what I needed to hear.

Say what you will about the subconscious, but mine was strong and sassy last night. 

I thought the podcaster said, “Sometimes you have to trust that your confidence will catch up with your competence.”

This is so far from what he said, I can’t even tell you how far. It’s literal light years away. My brain heard, “Sometimes” and “Confidence” and filled in the rest.

But it is true. And it’s what I needed to hear. 

Sometimes you have to trust that your confidence will catch up with your competence.

I’ve been struggling to write this last year. Part of it is brains (thanks, recent but not surprising ADHD diagnosis on top of preexisting depression and anxiety!). Part of it is routine and ritual (as in, I have none). Part of it is that weird thing where even though I’ve written and finished books before, and those books have done reasonably well, I think that I’m a fraud and those were flukes and I don’t know how to write a book at all.

I’ve struggled to feel like a writer these last few years.

I have ideas, of course, but when I sit down to write, the sentences feel stilted. Pained. Flat. They feel like approximations of language. Almost like an AI’s guess at what a novel would feel like, but short all the human emotion and experience. 

I remind myself that this is how it goes: I write one draft that feels flat. I write another draft that digs in. “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story,” said Terry Pratchett. 

And despite knowing this, the fear creeps into the drafting process. 

It sits next to me with needle fingers, clicking on its invisible bench. 

I can hear its teeth clacking.

It brings with it a winter chill, the kind that sits in your bones and pools in your belly.

When will I feel like I know how to write a book, while I’m writing the book?

Here are all the intrusive fearful imposter thoughts that fill my head while I’m writing my current book, LILAC WAS THE NIGHT.

This is bad. 

Your editor’s going to hate this. 

This is so different than how she thought you wrote.

This is different than REBEL therefore it’s bad.

That sentence was the ugliest thing I’ve ever read.

That doesn’t even make sense. How could you write that?

This isn’t pretty at all.

This plot is flimsy. This plot is thin and weak.

Why are you even trying to write this book? It’s obviously terrible.

Well if you thought your career was dead before you wrote this book you’ve killed it now!

This is really far from what you thought this book would be.

Wow everyone’s going to hate this.

This is objectively terrible. No one can read this.

This is what YA Twitter/Threads/Bookstagram’s going to think about this book.

This is what ______ is going to think about this book.

You just have to hope that ______ never reads this book. Definitely not that line you just wrote.

Well you have to finish it--you can’t afford not to finish it. 

Wow this is so bad you’re never going to be able to fix this throw it out start over maybe next time you’ll find any sort of skill. 

Writing those out was the easiest part of writing this blog post because that negative fear voice sits shotgun in my head rent-free, feet up on the dashboard, controlling the playlist, being a shitty navigator. We’ve missed so many turns because I’m too busy being berated by this fear.

But that’s all confidence, isn’t it? All of that negative internal talk only attacks and hurts my confidence. It doesn’t change my actual skills. It doesn’t hurt my actual competence. 

I’ve been wrestling with a book for the last five months. I’ve written literally 40 different openings for this book. I’ve tried it in first person and third person and present tense and past tense. I’ve tried it linear and nonlinear. I’ve tried it in dual point of view and single point of view. And I think I’m finally getting there. It’s not good yet. But I’m getting there. 

I’m getting there because of persistence and competence. Not confidence. I still feel extremely unsure of what I’m doing and if I’m going to pull this off. 

But that’s lacking confidence about an end product. A vast majority of that negative self talk above was about the end product. The finished book. How it’ll be received. How it won’t be received. 

I don’t need that right now.

Right now I need my own competence. This assuredness that I have the skills to write books, and right now, that’s all I need. 

Eventually, my confidence will catch up with my competence. 

Until then, I have to persist, knowing I’ve finished books before, and taken horrific first drafts and made them good books I’m proud of. And that’s competence.

Loki: Journey into Mystery is out on December 19th! You can preorder it from Bookshop.org here.