Do you know the difference between a lack of confidence and imposter syndrome? Did you even know there was a difference?

Watch my video below or read the transcript and see if you recognise any of the signs in yourself.

Hello my lovely writers!

My question for you today is, do you know the difference between a lack of confidence and imposter syndrome? 

Do you think they are the same? Perhaps you think having a lack of confidence means you’ve got imposter syndrome. That’s certainly the conclusion I had and how I viewed those two things. What I later learnt was that they’re two very different things. 

Everybody lacks confidence sometimes

Everybody goes through moments of lacking confidence. For example, when your work asks you to do a presentation, or give a speech, or show somebody senior or from a different branch around the office. Or maybe you’re going for a job interview, or you do amateur dramatics and you’ve got a show coming up. It could be anything. Anything that is heightened or out of the ordinary that you’re feeling pressure about. 

Most people will feel a lack of confidence in those situations. They might feel unsure about themselves at that moment but they do the show, they give the presentation, they go for the interview, or they show that person around the office. 

Afterwards, people come up to them and say, ‘Well done, that went really well. You did a great job. I really enjoyed that show. That presentation was great,’ and your confidence goes up. You think, ‘Yeah, that did go well. I did a good job there. I’m really glad I prepared for that,’ or, ‘Gosh, I was thrown into that situation and I did a really good job and I’m really pleased and I’m proud of myself.’ 

Do you have imposter syndrome or do you lack confidence?

There are many types of imposter syndrome but all of them have this in common – after you’ve done the presentation or the show, you think, ‘Oh my god, did that go okay? Was that all right?’

It doesn’t matter how many other people say, ‘You did a great job there. Oh my goodness, that was so interesting! I didn’t know this,’ or ‘You made me laugh in that show, it was so good,’ as a person with imposter syndrome, your brain is telling you, ‘They don’t really mean that. They’re just saying that because they feel sorry for me. They’re being polite because it was so bad they just don’t want me to know that.’ 

Your brain comes up with all kinds of justifications as to why the job you did was really not that good and you do not deserve the success or the accolade that you are receiving. 

If somebody says to you, ‘That story was really good, you did a great job there,’ do you come up with a reason as to why it isn’t and you think they’re just saying that and they don’t really mean what they’re saying?

Or can you take that praise or applause and say, ‘Thank you, I worked hard on that. I’m really pleased and proud of myself.’ 

Which one are you? If you’re the first, you’ve got imposter syndrome. If you’ve got the second, then your confidence, like most people’s, comes and goes. 

Let me know if this resonates with you and, if it does, and imposter syndrome is something you recognise in yourself, then join my Unlock Your Creative Block course. It’s all about letting go of imposter syndrome so you can write your novel with confidence, to enjoy writing it and enjoy the accolades you get when you finish that book. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

It’s hard knowing when to hit publish but it all depends on whether you’re an indie publisher, or if you’re going down the traditional publishing or hybrid publishing route. 

Watch the video below to find out more. 

 

Hello my lovely writers, how are you?

Somebody who watched an interview I conducted about Launch Pad: The Countdown to Publishing Your Book – a wonderful anthology I’ve been involved with – asked me a great question. 

The question was: How do you know when it’s the right time to hit publish? 

This question arose from a conversation about how, as soon as you hit publish, you are a business. While we might start writing stories to be creative and to fulfil a need in us, the reality is, as soon as you become a published author, that story you’ve been writing – possibly for decades – becomes a commodity. It becomes a product. It becomes an asset to you and, believe it or not, to your children as well. 

We need to shift our mindset

We need a shift from that mindset and all the ups and downs and angst that comes with being a creative. We have to shift from that mindset into one of a business person and put on our business hat which, for most of us as writers and creatives, is not a natural situation to be in. It’s certainly not why we thought we were getting into the book writing industry. 

The truth is you do become a business and you have to think differently about things. You have to stop thinking of your book as part of you, or as a child, because your book is not your baby. When you put your book out into the world, it belongs to everybody including individuals and book groups who are going to find, read, enjoy and discuss your book and its characters. 

If the amazing happens and your book gets optioned, your book very much stops being yours, as you’re putting it into the hands of TV or movie producers who are going to decide what happens to your story. They’re going to chop it up and move it around and turn it into something quite different that’s suitable for a viewing audience rather than a reading one. 

Knowing when to hit publish

But even after shifting our mindset, that still leaves us with the question: When do you hit publish?

This will depend on how you decide to publish your book. 

If you take the traditional route and find an agent who loves and believes in your story and is committed to finding a publisher for it, it’s then in the hands of that agent to find a publisher, then the publishing decision moves to the publisher. 

It then falls into the production pipeline and the publisher will decide when they hit publish. Let’s be clear about that. The publisher will decide when it fits into their publishing schedule and their publishing timeline. They decide when the books go to press, when pre-orders go up and when they go on sale. Your job is to turn up and do all the interviews, write the blog posts and go where you’re told to go and also of course create your own opportunities to promote your book. 

So, if you’re going down the traditional route, the question you really want to ask yourself is, when is the book ready to query? 

Query-ready is different to publish-ready

The decision to query is different to the decision to publish. I have not yet heard of an author – particularly a debut author – presenting a book to an agent and hearing the publisher say, ‘Yes, great! We’re going to go with that and you don’t need to make any changes. It’s all good.’ 

You need your book to be query-ready, which means your book is as good as you can make it, either entirely on your own or perhaps with feedback from a writing group you’ve been collaborating with or with help from a writing coach with whom you’ve been working. 

Upon sending the agent or publisher your query-ready manuscript, they are then going to say to you, ‘We love your book and really want to take it on. However, here are the changes we want to see,’ and you, as the author, get to decide whether to accept that offer and go ahead and publish with them or reject them and say, ‘No, I don’t want to make those changes. That’s not in keeping with my vision for the book.’ 

I went off on a bit of a tangent there but I want you to understand the difference between deciding when your book is going to be query-ready and when a publisher is going to decide it is publish-ready. 

Self-publishing, indie-publishing and hybrid-publishing

Things are different if you decide to go with self-publishing, indie-publishing or even hybrid publishing. With a hybrid publisher, you can take advantage of their in-house expertise but you’ll pay up front for it and then you collect more of the royalties on the back of that. 

Alternatively, if you’re going to be indie-publishing, you’ll be responsible for the up-front fees to put it all together, including the book cover and everything else you need to do before hitting publish. But if you are going to be an indie author and, to a degree, a hybrid author, you get to decide when to hit publish. 

As the author, creator, businessperson and authorpreneur, you get to make that choice but you have to decide whether to publish after one, two, three or more revisions. Or maybe you are not happy to publish until you’ve got some feedback from some beta readers. 

Perhaps you’re going to go a step further and have your manuscript professionally evaluated. You can then take on board those comments and make any changes recommended that you agree with and then hit publish.

There is no perfect book

I’m just going to add a little addendum here for those perfectionists out there, and you know who you are. There’s a difference between being publish-ready and being perfect. I often argue how there is no perfect book and I always default to Stephen King on this. 

Stephen King is one of the greatest, most popular and most successful living authors of our generation. Thousands of people give him 5-star reviews and proclaim he is the master of what he does but, equally, there are thousands of people who will give him a 1-star review and say, ‘I don’t get what the fuss is.’

Even after he’s been writing for forty, fifty years, he still hasn’t written the perfect book because there is no such thing as the perfect book. 

So, for you perfectionists out there, just hear that. There is no such thing as a perfect book. If you continue to pursue perfection, you’re going to get nowhere. Your book’s never going to get finished, so you’ll never query and you’ll never publish. 

Each book you write will be better than the one before it

You need to get to a point where you are happy with your book and where you feel that this is the best you are able to do at this moment in time, given where you are in your writing life and your experience of long form storytelling. Remember, your second book is going to be better than your first one. 

The third book is going to be better than that. The fourth book is going to continue to get better and better and better. So, for you perfectionists, please try and put that to one side and know your book’s never going to be perfect but you are going to improve with every book you write, whether or not you publish it. 

Knowing when to hit publish

Okay, back to knowing when to hit publish. As I’ve already mentioned, it depends if you’re going down the traditional or indie route. If you’re going down the traditional route, that’s going to be dependent on your publisher, even in a small press, because they’ve got their schedule and will want to put it in a timeline and a pipeline in which to maximise your book’s release. 

If you’re going with a hybrid publisher, you have more of a say because you’re going to be doing the vast majority of the promotion yourself. 

If you’re going fully indie, it is totally up to you. You get to decide when you are ready to hit publish. Everything is in your hands which, of course, is a double-edged sword. Like anything, there’s pros and cons and you’ve got to determine which is the right path for you and also the right path for your book. 

Watch the Launch Pad interview

If you watch the Launch Pad interview we did, you’ll see we talk about how there is no one route to publishing and how, in the last two years, things have shifted from being what is the right thing for each writer to what’s the right thing for each book. 

Every project can be done differently now, it’s not just a one and done deal, you’re not just indie or just trad, you can be a mixture of both and that is super-exciting. 

I hope that helps with knowing when to hit publish and how it works. 

Emma xx 

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

Do you trust yourself to write? 

Watch the video below to find out why you need to trust your own judgement when it comes to your writing. 

 

Hello my lovely writers, how are you?

A question I often get asked is, how do you know when to trust yourself to write? How do you know when you’ve got a good idea? How do you know when your dialogue is enough? How do you know you’ve got all the elements of your story together? 

Believe it or not, this is about more than just craft. I know craft is what we go to first of all because, if we’re not sure about something, or if we don’t understand something, craft is where we immediately assume the problem lies. 

You might be surprised to find out craft isn’t necessarily where the problem is. My guess is you’ve read a lot of books, attended a lot of webinars and writing courses and read a lot of blog posts and therefore you already have a solid grasp of the craft of writing. 

Trust yourself to write

What’s really holding you back is trusting your instincts, trusting your own discernment and trusting you know what you need to do. 

Say to yourself, ‘Do you know what? I’ve done a lot of practising. I’ve done a lot of writing. I’ve done a lot of research into the craft of writing. Now it’s time to dig deep. Now it’s time to trust myself and use my own judgement and my own discernment.’ 

That’s where the magic can happen. That’s where things really start to take off. I know it’s not easy to trust yourself, and to trust your confidence and to trust you know what to do, because we’re always looking for that external validation. 

But that’s not where it is. That’s not what you need. You need to trust yourself. I want to reach out to you right now and say, ‘Trust yourself to write. You know what you’re doing. You can do it.’ 

Go ahead. Trust yourself. Trust your discernment. Trust you’ve learnt enough, studied enough, can do enough and now you’ve just got to write the book. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

At the Surrey International Writers’ Conference, Hallie Ephron gave us writers some great advice, including, ‘Hold your nose and write.’ Isn’t that a fantastic saying? 

Watch the video below to find out how to hold your nose and write. 

 

Hello my lovely writers, how are you?

I attended the fantastic Surrey International Writers’ Conference in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. If you’ve not been to it, I absolutely recommend you go because there were some top class authors and speakers there. 

One of my favourites was Hallie Ephron and she said an amazing thing to us writers. She said, ‘You’ve just got to hold your nose and write.’

Hold your nose and write

Hold your nose and write. Hallie made the excellent point that your first draft, no matter what you write, is never going to be good enough for you. 

That’s a really interesting and important distinction. Your first draft is never going to be good enough for you. It might be good enough for somebody else, it might even be good enough for a reader, depending on how experienced a writer you are but, essentially, at the beginning, it’s never going to be good enough for you and that’s why Hallie says it’s so important to revise.

Write that draft you know is not going to be good enough for you and that you know you’re not going to be entirely happy with because then you get to revise it and make your work that little bit better. 

Revision is where it happens but, in the first instance, you’ve just got to hold your nose and write.  

Unlock your creative block

If you’re somebody who struggles to hold your nose and write, there’s something much deeper going on that stops you from doing the writing you want to do, or even just getting started at all.

If, when you think about writing, a wall of resistance comes up and prevents you from writing or keeps you in that procrastination safe zone, I have a resource to help you. It will unearth what’s really holding you back and where that writer’s block is really coming from. 

It’s called Unlock Your Creative Block. 

In the meantime, hold your nose and write. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!

We all have off days, days when the words just won’t come. But if you stay close to the fire and keep in touch with your work in progress, that’s still progress. 

Watch the video below to find out how staying close to the fire is still working on your book. 

 

Hello my lovely writers, how are you? 

Not every day is the day the muse hits us. Not every day do we wake up feeling the joys of spring and want to get to our desk. There are days when that absolutely does happen but there are other days, like today has been for me, where it’s just not been happening at all. 

I just can’t wake up today. I don’t know why. I had a good night’s sleep, I woke up bright and early but I just can’t quite wake up. I’ve been for a walk but still I’m feeling groggy and uninspired. 

It’s been raining here for the last four weeks with maybe a brief interlude here and there and, when you wake up day after day with heavy clouds, grey skies and the rain pouring down, it doesn’t do a lot for one’s spirits. 

I’ve just not been in the mood to write today

So, today I’ve just not been in the mood. But writing’s what I do. Writing is what I love. It is how I hope one day to be making my way in the world and making my mark on the world, which I’m sure is the same for you. 

What do I get to do on days when I feel like this? I get to still show up at my desk. I get to sit down, open my document, have a look through it, do some thinking about it, make some notes here and there and just be with my work-in-progress. 

And that’s what I did. I didn’t spend as long on it as I would have liked to have done. I didn’t write anything new today but I did keep in touch with my book. 

Stay close to the fire

I did what one of my coaches calls staying close to the fire, which means I opened the document, I read it through, I had a look at it, I thought about my characters, what’s going on for them, their motivations and generally how things are progressing in the book.  I kept close to my book.

I’m sure you know as well as I do that, if you take too long a break from your work, you begin to forget it. You lose the momentum, you slip off the wagon and it can be difficult getting back on it. 

I wanted to share that with you because you may be feeling that way today as well, or there might be a day where you’re just not with the muse, she’s not come to visit you but you know you’ve got to do it anyway. 

If you stay close to the fire and keep in with your work by keeping in touch with it, opening it up to have a look at it, to read through it and think about it, that is still progress. 

Writing a book is work and that is still doing the work required to write a novel. It’s not all about what goes on the page, so much of it is what goes on in your brain and mulling it over. That is where the vast majority of the work happens and then, when you’ve mulled it over enough, you get excited and you put it down on the page. 

If you’re not feeling the passion, the love, the muse today, don’t worry, it will come back. Just stay close to the fire and you’ll get there. 

Emma xx

Emma Dhesi

Emma Dhesi is a Certified Author Accelerator Book Coach and bestselling author who helps writers let go of perfectionism, self-doubt and writer's block through her signature programme, Unlock Your Creative Block.

She is the host of the YouTube Channel, Emma Dhesi, where she interviews debut and experienced authors alike.

Through her 1:1 coaching programme, Emma helps new authors start and finish their first novel.

Emma provides personal written feedback on their pages and guides them through the emotional rollercoaster that is writing a novel!