With Self Doubt: Am I Good Enough?

 It was suggested over on Twitter that I write about Self-Doubt. I don't know about you but for me - talk about the Mother Lobe, the thing that many things flow.

I have self doubt in:

Searching for a job.

Dating (I wouldn't call what I do, dating. Don't have a clue how to put myself out there.)

And in writing.

I mean I suffered from self-doubt since I was nine years old in third grade. You know the year that girls start whispering, also the year I noticed that this hearing loss made me different. Something I never felt with my family, but at school that year I noticed it. It started when the other girls around me whispered. It grew to the overwhelm self hate and self doubt that I wasn't good enough.

I remember telling my mother that no one in my class liked me. She, of course, went to my teacher. I remember the confuse look on my teacher's face, because it wasn't true. I built it up in my mind from my own self dislike. I mean if you're talking to a group of girls on the playground and all at once they run away because in a spit second they decided to go play elsewhere and you didn't hear the one sentence that decided that. What would you think?

By the way this is also the year I realized that my spelling and reading skills were not at the level of my classmates.

I spent two hours in the class for the hard of hearing working on those skills. This also told me I was different. But that classroom was a safe place. I wasn't different from the teenagers in that class that were also hard of hearing. I was the youngest in the class.  

I think that the year my shyness grew to point that it was painful for me to come out of my shell to talk to anyone.

See lots of self doubt.

I didn't know about introverts and extroverts. I also didn't realize that the first time I meet someone I need to "learn" how they sound, how they talk and their body language .

I know this now so I'm quiet the first time I meet someone in a group, or since I've gotten older I learned how to get people talking so I don't have to.  

Over the years I searched for the thing called self confidence. I even went to an all girls' college because on the campus tour I heard that girls who went to all girls' school had more confidence. It shocked everyone that I chose to go to an out of town college. I was that shy.

I found self confidence for a little while. Well, enough to somewhat come out of my shell. It still not easy, when it come to talking to men for one thing. Like I said I have no clue how to put myself out there.

When it come to flirting I'm clueless. I don't how to flirt. Also if I picked up the body language that a guy's interested in me. I either tell myself that I'm wrong and the guy's being nice or I freeze. I have ran before. Like ran away from the whole soccer team at the university I attended.  Yup... there is a story there, sure is.  

Also I don't have a clue how to made the internet dating work for me either.

 I have a problem of thinking I'm not good enough to be loved, not in that way. I have a strange way of thinking that another girl would be better for this guy. I don't give myself much of a chance.

The same thing would be said for searching for a job. I don't have much confidence that I can do the job well. I haven't even got the job and I'm worried I'm not good enough. I didn't do my last job very well. I didn't have a clue, and the women who worked with me were so worried I'd take their job that they didn't help me.

I didn't want their job. When I started that job I was looking into going back to school and I thought about being a minister. Yes, a female minister. I was looking into going to seminary school. By the time I got laid off from that job ten months later I was so full of self-doubt I could feel it clawing at my back. I was no longer looking into going seminary school.

A few things happened in my family that it turned out not having a job meant I could help my family. It was a relief to do something good for my family.

But I was in a place where I thought I was bad a picking what I should do. Stuck in life. (still there)

To escape the self doubt I wrote novels.

But I had self-doubt there. About my writing. I mean I would think who I'm I kidding and write anyway. I wrote because I need to write. I needed to escape.  

By the way I wrote about my doubts with my writing in a short series:

Lack of Spelling Skill

Is My Story Good Enough?

Can I Write?

I have doubts about sharing this post with you.

I'm still searching for self-confidence.

I hope this help you realize you're not alone. 

A Writing Routine

My Writing Routine

Do I have a Writing Routine? Kinda.

Do I write every day? No.

Do I think about my novel every day? Yes.

Do I work on my novel every day. Yes.

So I'm still trying to figure out my writing routine. For the first time in my life working on my novel every day when it's not the summer or the month of November.

My usual routine was in the month of November, for a writing challenge called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I would start a new idea on the 1st. NaNoWriMo challenged a writer to write a novel (50,000 words) in a month In the 10+  years I have entered NaNoWriMo I never won. I never had 50,000 words before the stuck of midnight on November 30. The most I had was last year (2016). It was 25,707 words.

After NaNoWriMo I would write a little bit here and there on the novel. Once summer hit I would try to get my butt in a chair in front of a computer and finish my NaNoWriMo novel. I finished two first drafts this way. But they needed a lot of work.

Last year was not a new idea but a fresh take on an idea I tried to write the year before and the year before that.

I say that the first novel I wrote taught me how to write 50,000 words, but it didn't have a plot. In fact it had a three plots. If I couldn't think of anything to write I would write in another crazy direction. It taught me that I could sit down and write the words needed.

I say the second novel taught me how to hold the plot for the whole novel. I studied Michael Hauge's The Five Key turning points of allSuccessful Screenplays the whole time I wrote that one. I had index cards laid out on my floor for each of the stages and the turning points and would decide what I would write as I came to that point in the plot.

I didn't even try to edit that novel. Maybe one day I'll return to it.

This was my writing routine before.

In the last month and half I have tried to form a better writing routine. I finished this year NaNoMoWri novel during the summer, (Really it's a long outline and really the 3rd try to write this idea) I worked beyond the point where I would have stopped on previous novels. I started re-writing. Something I tried before. It's uncharted territory for me.

What I have learned in this month and half:

1. I don't type out words every day.

2. Writing isn't always about writing. Sometimes it's about figuring out what to write next.

3. When I can't write I need to read. It's like my creative is water in a well and it's running low.

4. It's good to have a supportive writing group, like #TurtleWriters over on Twitter. I have not found my writing group in real life.

5. So far the plan to get up and write first thing is not happening.

6. First coffee and a long moment in the comfortable chair in the den.  After I fix the third coffee I'm ready to write.

7. I have known for a long time I'm not a night owl. I must go to sleep!

8. I write a little bit here and there. I'm still trying to figure out when the best time for me to write.

This is my writing routine so far. This is what I do. You might do something different. You might need to learn what best for you. That what I'm trying to do.

This could change with another book. I have read many writer who wrote that each book is different.

What's your writing routine?

Pitch Wars Journey: About Me

About Me:

Hi, I'm Annie Laurie Gray. Yeah like the old Scottish song. It's a poem too by William Douglas. But I wasn't name after those. I was named after my great-grandmother.  

Here's an interesting fact: I think my name gave me a love of wanting to know more about names. I want to know anything about names from the meaning, how to pronoun, and to the family history behind how you got that name.

Another fact: I was born with hearing loss. I was born seven weeks early and lucky to be alive. Lucky that all that wrong with me was the hearing loss. Due to my hearing loss, and the fact that I couldn't hear (really I mean I couldn't understand a word said) in the lunchroom I daydreamed a lot as a child and teenager. Add in a love of story. (Any story: T.V. shows, movies or books,) it's no surprise I wanted to be a writer.

What I really want to tell you is: I have a goal. In a year I want to enter #Pitchwars. Every year it's start in August. I wanted to enter this contest for a few years now. I discovered it on twitter. I noticed a tweet about someone wanting a book, but it looked like an agent wish list but the person was not an agent but a published author. The tweet had a link that lead to the person wish list. Turned out that it was a wish list for a writing contest, and the person posting the wish list would be a mentor for a one lucky writer. I searched the wish list of a more of the mentors and realized that the novel I just started...well it fit the list. This knowledge encouraged me to write the novel.  I wanted to be that lucky writer!

Click for more information on Pitch Wars #Pitchwars 

But every year when August rolled around I saw all the tweets about Pitch Wars  but my novel wasn't ready. Plus I hated what I had written.

November would come and I would try again to write my novel. I loved the fact that I had a hard of hearing heroine like me, but the rest I never liked. For one I was writing about a thirteen year old, but I would start writing a love story meant for someone older. Finally I decided that my heroine need a older teenager. Also I was trying to write a contemporary novel. I was trying to show the life of someone with hearing loss.    

I hated it.

I felt like my life was about more than my hearing loss, even though my hearing loss influence my life every day, it's not my life. Why was I making it the life of my character? Also I noticed I was explaining what being hard of hearing was to my reader. I wanted to write about my character falling in love, and what it meant to her life, not how a hearing person need to see a person with hearing loss.

The other thing I was trying to write contemporary novel. I love reading contemporary novels but I wanted to write a story that hinting at something greater then ourselves. I wanted to write about God but not write a Christian novel. I wanted to write about the supernatural but again not something that took away from the contemporary story that I loved to read. I had a hard time finding a good balance between contemporary and paranormal.

I finally found something called Magical Realism and this helped me write what I hope was a modern fairy tale that featured my hard of hearing heroine.  

So last month (August) #Pitchwars rolled around again. Again my novel was not ready. But I knew I had a good story, finally. I wanted to enter so bad that I grained my teeth to the point that I had TMJ, (Temporomandibular joint dysfunction) Yeah, I wanted to enter that bad.

So I decided that I'm going to fix my plot holes, make my good story into a great story and enter next year. I would like to share my journey over the next year, here on my blog. I hope you follow me on my journey and it encourage you to follow your own dreams.