I Submitted

Okay, that title may be misleading. Let me finish the sentence.

I submitted a piece of writing to a contest yesterday. It was a rather large contest-one of Writer's Digest's annual contests-so the chance of actually winning is rather minute, but on the other hand, I can then comfort myself with the knowledge that there was lots of competition. In other words, it is relatively safe.

My attitude about writing is actually a perfect example of what my attitude about life in general should be. Whenever I go through my funks of self doubt and depleted self esteem, I always get the same advice from multiple sources: stop worrying about what everyone else thinks. Like yourself. If you are happy with yourself, it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. If you have confidence, people will like you, and you won't care nearly as much if they don't. Etc, etc, etc.

When it comes to writing, I can do that. I have written things that I like (that should go without saying, I guess, otherwise, why would I have written them, right?) before and then shared them only to receive massive amounts of criticism. If that happened in some other area of my life, I would be devastated and probably go into a serious depression. In fact, that has happened. For instance, if I was walking across the street and some jackass (sorry, still a little bitter-true story) stuck his head out a car window and yelled, "Lay off the Twinkies, fat ass!" that would bother me. A lot. To the point of tears, probably for the next week or so. I wouldn't be able to rationalize or separate his opinion of me from my own. If I were to share a piece of writing, though, and someone said, for example, "Quickly lay off the adverbs, bad writer!" it wouldn't bother me at all. I would take a look at what I had written, revise if I felt my accuser's comment was valid, and then move on. And if I felt my accuser's comment was not valid, I would simply ignore it because I know very well that different people like different kinds of writing, and no matter what anyone says, if I really, really like a piece I have written, I will not change it for anyone.

Why should I feel any different about myself?

If I like myself the way I am, and I am pretty sure that in the absence of those who criticize me I would, then what does it matter what other people think? There are more than likely almost as many people in the world who like me as there are who don't; I just need to find my audience. Maybe that's what we all need to silence our self doubt.

As people, it would probably be a good thing for all of us to take a good look at our own inner critics and sift through what he or she has to say. We should set aside the criticisms that have honestly come from within ourselves and carefully inspect what's left. Anything that might have some validity to it, anything that we are interested in changing, can be added to the pile of self-criticism, but the rest needs to be thrown away, ignored. Outside opinions are just that, opinions. Not every opinion is "accurate."

Where one person sees fat, another sees soft and beautiful. Where one person sees lazy, another person sees whimsical and at ease. Where one person sees obnoxious, another person sees jolly and entertaining. I could go on forever. But instead, I think I am going to focus on seeing myself as the Great American Novel. I can get my ideas from all over the place-my own experience, other people's stories, made up notions-but I am the author and I can accept or reject outside ideas at will. I must write myself and it is up to me to make up the story.