You Just Lack Confidence

Hmmm...you think?

A friend of mine said this to me recently.  Actually, people have said this to me a lot in my life: you're great, you just lack confidence.

Why isn't confidence something you can just go buy at the store?

I think, for me at least, that confidence is intimately tied into my standards for my own performance.  I'm sure it's true for everyone, just as I'm sure everyone else is able to cut themselves a little slack.  This same kind friend has repeatedly pointed out to me that my standards for myself are too high.  I can't cut myself any slack.  It makes no difference to me whether I am a beginner or not.  If I did not bring into being the creation lurking in my head, then I failed.  I've wasted my time, and other people's, and now I have to do it again.

I don't manage "good enough" very well.  Like Yoda says, there is no 'try', only 'do' or 'do not'.  I loathe landing in the middle, in 'try'.  It's like being Wile E. Coyote, and missing the leap across the canyon.  It really does feel that bad to me.  I'm terrible at telling myself -- at reassuring myself, because that's what we're talking about here -- I'm terrible at telling myself that something is a good first try.  I want to do better than that.  I have no coping skills in this area, and I freak out at the slightest setback. 

I really do understand that a lot of people -- a lot of people -- feel this way.  I'm not minimizing, or being self-absorbed.  I'm saying all this in the fervent hope that I'm not the only weirdo who does this to herself.  And the reason I am thinking about this is: I wrote a story some people disagree with.  Never mind the legions of people who did agree with it, and who have every right to be insulted at my inability to take their praise and loving kindness on board.  I don't blame them; I'd be pissed too.  But I'm terrified by the few who really disagree with my approach.  I'm haunted by my inability to reach them, to help them see the thing the way I see it.  I swing wildly between being deeply confused and hurt, and wanting to smack them upside the heads for being so narrow and judgmental.

I really don't handle judgmental well. 

So now I am confronted with revealing my writing to people again: hence, the freakout here.  It's not possible for me to reach everyone, and I'm not even sure that's my real issue.  I think in the end, my real issue is that I find it...well, unfair that an extremely small number of potential readers stay away because they believe my subject matter to be wrongheaded.  They don't agree with my take, and therefore feel my take has no inherent merit or value.  Am I making sense here?  In other words: "I personally don't like it, and that proves it's utter crap."

I'm sorry?  Since when is anyone's opinion that solid gold?

Let's face it, I dislike my fair share of stories too, and I wouldn't be caught dead telling the authors their work is worthless because my taste works differently.  I should point out at this juncture I am talking about fiction, and not nonfiction, or worse yet, punditry.  In fiction, either the story entertains or it doesn't.  And if it doesn't entertain me, that doesn't mean the work is inherently worthless.  That means only that I wasn't entertained.

I should also say here that before I shared my own work, I thought nothing of saying, "I don't like it, that means it's crap."  Let me say upfront that now the shoe has been shoved on my foot, it's different.  Oh, yes ma'am, it's different.  Now, I am beginning to understand, and I owe it to myself if not others to admit that.

Now, I would never tell another author "I don't like your ideas, and that means your ideas are worthless".  Because there's a difference there, between "I don't agree" and "You have no right."  Who am I to make that judgment?  Who is anyone, to say that?  My opinion is not the same as fact.

Let me say again: My opinion is not the same as fact.  It's very existence is not proof of it's irrefutability.  My opinion is not fact.  And neither is anyone else's. 

It's an idea I can't grasp at all -- or rather, I can't grasp how to handle it when it's thrown at me.  How on earth do I survive allowing these people to see how hard I work at my fiction and how vulnerable it makes me?  Revealing one's writing is a bit like getting naked in a room full of strangers.  How do I get naked in a room full of strangers, and survive the ordeal? 

Is that a matter of confidence, or emotional shielding?  You see, as I've written this, I think I've worked out that confidence doesn't actually have a lot to do with it.  I'm just not sure I will ever feel a lack of threat, which is the core of the popular idea of 'confidence'.  But right now, I'm thinking 'confidence' is actually the ability to feel shielded enough to do it anyway.  So now, what's the shielding?

Unfortunately, I have to make dinner now. :)  But I'll let you know what I think if I come up with something.