When my daughter was about nine years old, she went through a whining phase. Oh my goodness. Nothing pushes all my parental buttons like a whiny kid. Give me nails on a chalkboard over whiny kid any day of the week.

Rather than constantly losing my cool and making things worse, she and I developed a strategy. Whenever she started with one of those cranky-whiney comments, I’d say something like, “Yay! A whining contest! Let me try.” Summoning an exaggerated complain-y voice, I’d uncork a really great whine. “Your turn,” I’d say, then she would try to beat my whine. We’d keep going until we were both laughing like lunatics. Ninety percent of the time, she forgot what she was complaining about in the first place.

Self-doubt comes with creativity like a side of loaded curly fries.

Recently I went through a stretch in my writing life where I was struggling with negative feelings. Now, my intellectual brain understands that this is absolutely normal. Every writer has had to deal with self-doubt at some point, and many face it every day. Writing is one of those creative pursuits that just seems to automatically come with a big old side of self-doubt. Like a combo-meal. Or a BOGOGroupon. Something like that.

But when I’m in the middle of it, it feels like the worst case ever. My irrational brain is convinced my situation is unique, and no one else could ever be such a loser of a writer!

Usually I just try to wait it out until it passes. This time, however, I was thinking about how my self-doubt often sounds like a cranky, whiny kid–I wonder if that’s why whiny talk triggers me so–and that made me think of the whining contest. What would happen if I actually acknowledged all that self-doubt I was feeling? When I stopped and listened to what the negative voices were saying, I was amazed how incredibly inaccurate they were.

Now, I can’t say if that whining contest thing is a legitimate parenting strategy–I only know it worked for me and my daughter. I did read up a little on what the Internet parenting consortium has to say about dealing with kids when they have a meltdown, and some of it is pretty on-the-nose when it comes to dealing with self doubt.

To begin with, do a little detective work and figure out the source of the meltdown. According to one parenting site, cranky kids are usually feeling overwhelmed. They might be

tiredhungry or thirstyboredangry or frustratedfeeling powerless or weakfeeling unsafe or threatenedfeeling unloved, disconnected, and invisiblefeeling that no one cares.

Is your writer-self feeling any of these? If you can identify the root of the problem, you can start brainstorming ideas to deal with the problem. For example, maybe I’m feeling disconnected, which means I can call one of my writer friends for a chat. If it’s a chronic disconnect, organize some kind of writers support group. The point is, translating the self-doubt into action items makes me feel much more equipped to deal with it.

If self doubts are continually creeping in and crippling your productivity, try making them part of your process. When you sit down to write, give yourself a finite time to wallow in despair. (This is temporary. Permanent wallowing is not helpful, in my experience.) Here’s what I recommend:

Facing down self-doubt can be part of your creative process.



Set the timer for three minutes and give yourself full wallowing privileges. Listen to the negative voices; say them out loud if that helps. Write them down. Make a list of all the bad things that could happen or all the ways you could fail. Do whatever you need to do to get those voices out of your head and into the daylight where you can get a good look at them. After the timer goes off, switch the brain to rational-thinking mode. Using your analytical brain, label those thoughts for exactly what they are: Untrue. Unkind. Unlikely. Irrelevant. Irrational. Some of the things on that list will be downright ridiculous.Now that the voices are silenced for the next little while, get to writing!

And you know what? If one of those things on the bad list does happen, so be it. At least you tried. You won’t know if you don’t try. Your job is to prove the pessimist inside you wrong. Choosing not to try means choosing not to live true, and that’s never a good choice.