Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Self-Doubt or Gut Feeling

  1. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Let’s begin the Fight
  2. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Rejection – The Ugly Word
  3. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Learning to Juggle
  4. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: To Dump or not to Dump
  5. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Keep the Faith
  6. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Finding Your Identity
  7. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Just for the love of it
  8. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: 5 Step plan for success
  9. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Planning Issue
  10. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Crossroads
  11. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Overwhelming Effect
  12. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Waiting Game
  13. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Reflection 2013
  14. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: New Year New Challenges
  15. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Am I a real Writer?
  16. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Taking The Next Step
  17. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Submission Phobia
  18. Setting Self Doubt On Fire: How To Get Ideas
  19. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Dealing with Fear
  20. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Only Guarantee
  21. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Doubts of others
  22. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Let those positives shine
  23. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: First Draft Blues
  24. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Time-wasting issue
  25. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Embrace the bad ideas
  26. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Writer or Author?
  27. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Negative Feedback; the double slap
  28. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Pat yourself on the back
  29. Setting Self Doubt On Fire: The Deflated Eureka Moment
  30. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The doomed quest for perfection
  31. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Writing Group fears
  32. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Horror Tree Crew tackle Mr Self Doubt
  33. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Read aloud challenge
  34. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Find your inner belief
  35. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: NaNoWriMo and Self-Doubt
  36. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: We are NaNoWriMo winners
  37. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: New Year’s Resolutions for Writers
  38. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The benefits of organizing
  39. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Editing Strain
  40. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Writing Group Experience
  41. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Dealing with second stage fears
  42. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Reading aloud to an audience
  43. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Importance of perseverance
  44. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Self-Doubt or Gut Feeling
  45. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Get ready for NaNoEdMo
  46. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Benefits of Writing Goals
  47. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Rejection Gets Better
  48. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Writers, take care of yourself!
  49. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: How to Boost Your Self-Confidence
  50. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Why You Should Go to a Writing Festival
  51. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Help! A Publisher has Dropped Me
  52. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Setting Self Doubt on Fire Challenge
  53. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: How to Prepare for a Book Reading Event
  54. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: It’s NaNoWriMo and NaNoEdMo Time
  55. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Help! I Didn’t Reach My NaNo Goal
  56. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Let’s Beat Self-Doubt in 2017
  57. WIHM: Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Female Horror Writer and Proud
  58. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Don’t Let Self-Doubt Make You Miss Deadlines
  59. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Hey! Where’s My Book Reading Audience
  60. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: 5 Tips on How to Ignore the Negative Voices
  61. Video Refresh: Rejection – The Ugly Word
  62. Video Refresh: Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Learning to Juggle
  63. Video Refresh: To Dump or not to Dump
  64. Video Refresh: Keep The Faith
  65. Video Refresh: Finding Your Identity
  66. Video Refresh: 5 Step plan for success
  67. Video Refresh: The Planning Issue
  68. Video Refresh: The Crossroads
  69. Video Refresh: The Overwhelming Effect
  70. Video Refresh: The Waiting Game
  71. Video Refresh: Am I A Real Writer?
  72. Video Refresh: Taking The Next Step
  73. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Let’s Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway in 2019
  74. Video Refresh: Submission Phobia
  75. Video Refresh: Dealing With Fear
  76. WIHM: Setting Self Doubt on Fire: The Female Horror Author Reading Challenge
  77. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Writer or Author? Video Refresh
  78. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Beat the Fear of Self-Publishing
  79. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: Do NaNoWriMo Differently This Year
  80. Setting Self Doubt on Fire: How Can Online Groups Help Writers?
  81. Setting Self-Doubt on Fire – AuthorTube – Learn How to Describe Emotion
  82. Setting Self-Doubt on Fire: How to Set Realistic Goals for NaNoWriMo

Setting-Self-Doubt-on-Fire_header

Hi, everyone! I’m back with some more self-doubt fighting words. So what do I have for you today? Well, today I will be discussing how to tell the difference between self-doubt and gut feeling. Throughout my writing journey, I have experienced both. However, while self-doubt is a pain and often gets in the way, gut feeling is something you shouldn’t ignore, and this is why today we will be looking at how to tell the difference between the two.

Before we can try to tell the difference between self-doubt and gut feeling, we need to know what each one is. What is self-doubt? Self-doubt is the lack of confidence and belief in yourself and your abilities. You fear that what you are doing is wrong, even when you don’t have a valid reason to believe so. What is gut feeling? Gut feeling is the feeling that something is wrong, but you can’t figure out what. However, you are sure that there is something wrong with your story or poem. It’s less about you as a writer and more about your individual project.

As you can see, it is quite easy to get the two mixed up, so how do you tell the difference? Well, I have come up with five tips to help you:

What to do:

  • Allow other people to read your story. However, you need to make sure that you don’t tell your readers that you feel something is wrong with your story; you don’t want to lead them.
  • Put a story away for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes. Is the issue still there? Sometimes you just need time away from a story because if you stare at something long enough, it’s easy to see mistakes, even when they are not there.
  • See if the doubt is about you as a writer or a particular story or poem. Do you feel this way about all of your stories or is it just the one. Submission Phobia will also convince you that your story isn’t ready to submit. If the doubt is about you as a writer, then you’re dealing with self-doubt. However, if it’s about the story (e.g. the ending doesn’t feel right), then you might need to do another edit. I would suggest a break from the story before doing this. From my experience, you can see mistakes better after a break.
  • Try to figure out what is wrong. This isn’t easy, but for you to be sure that there is an issue with your story you need to know what it is. So to figure out what’s wrong, you can ask questions. The questions to ask are why (e.g. why does the ghost haunt the main character?), what (e.g. what’s the theme or message behind the story?), how (e.g. how did the killer get into the house?), who (e.g. who is the main character? And not just the name but who are they as a person.), and when (e.g. when did the main character discover the killer?)
  • Start believing in yourself. This isn’t easy (trust me, I know), but you need to believe that you can write, and instead of putting yourself down focus on ways to improve yourself and your work. Once you do this, then you’ll soon be able to differentiate between self-doubt and gut feeling.

So there you have it, five ways to tell the difference between self-doubt and gut feeling. I hope they help. It is difficult, and sometimes self-doubt can disguise itself as ‘gut feeling’, but all you can do is keep writing and not allow fear to stop you from succeeding.

To end this post, here is another inspirational quote:

“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” ― Suzy Kassem

 

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