Geneen Roth wrote a great book. It’s called Women, Food and God. In it, she describes a process called Inquiry. The reason I mention this is that after you work your way through this process, she ends it by saying,
With each inquiry, you have the chance to discover you are not who you think you are. What a relief!
Ha!!! Ain’t that the truth? And I’m going to take that little snippet and run with it regarding our writing. We all think we’re lousy writers. You know I’m right about that. Even at our most confident, there’s a little voice in the recesses of our minds that says, “Just you wait until the next review…”
Well, don’t listen to it. Embrace the fact that you are not who you think you are. Embrace the fact that self-criticism is part of the game and is a healthy thing. Embrace the fact that the only thing is to keep writing … write through it, write around it, over it, under it…just keep writing and maybe someday it’ll be okay to discover you are not the writer you think you are. What A Relief!