After banging on about my 30,000-word goal and uni application for so long, I am pleased to report … I made it into the subject!
In mid July, I’ll be returning to uni after 18 months’ leave of absence for the writing stream of Towards Publication! And it gets better — I’ll be doing it with my friends Teneille, Alice and Kristen. Had life not taken the turn it did in early 2024, I would have probably completed the subject last year and missed the opportunity to do it with this stellar trio.
Despite this exciting development, in the past week, I experienced a major loss of confidence in my writing, hitting my lowest point during Claire G. Coleman’s Getting Published masterclass, which was part of the Q-Lit Festival (thanks Teneille for shouting me a ticket).
The masterclass was great; my belief in my project, not so great. One of the many gems Claire shared was what she considers the 3 factors in finding success as a writer (sometimes just one will do, but often some of each):
Luck
Talent
Bloody hard work
My crisis of confidence coincided with the many idle weeks following submission of my 30,000 words. It was symptomatic of the overthink and comparison of myself to others that creeps in when I step away from my project for too long.
And so, I shall write.
And as Claire advised, I’ll finesse my elevator pitch so that when asked what my manuscript is about, I’ll ooze confidence while delivering a compelling one liner. Or three-liner if I find my captive audience in the elevator of a skyscraper. My bravado will come from generous lashings of fake-it-till-you-make-it sauce, but it needs to be grounded in my belief in my project, or elevator passengers will call bullshit. And to find and sustain belief, I need to do the work, the bloody hard work, which in turn will help me hone whatever talent I possess and enable me to make the most of ‘luck’ when it comes my way.
Which brings me, once again, to Chani’s 28-day breakthrough course. Yes, this is a Chani stan Substack. I was blown away by my breakthroughs around trust. So much so that after completing the course, I started over. At time of writing, I am on Day 14, and this time, my breakthrough is around writing.
One of the exercises in the course is to identify your inner critic and make a pact with them along the lines of, Thank you for looking out for me, but I’ve got it now, you can relax. I was familiar with the idea of anthropomorphising the inner critic, courtesy of The Artist’s Way, but during Chani’s course, I made a profound discovery — my inner critic is my seven-year-old self, and not some external authority figure.
Interestingly, this time around, with writing as my focus, my inner critic, while still a version of me, is the new-to-motherhood me of 2014 — the me who was facing a range of challenges, on top of the obvious: chronic pain, a move to the country, isolation, a near-fatal adverse drug reaction, and an unhappy relationship.
The 2014 me had no capacity to dream of writing as anything more than a distraction or at best, a hobby. Yet she sowed the seeds I now reap by starting a blog, connecting with an online community of writers, and chipping away at craft, one online writing course after another, because that was more within reach than the uni course she really wanted to do.
Spoiler: five years on, that relationship ended, she moved house, her health improved, she found the capacity to dream big, and she enrolled in that uni course (and LOL, 5 years on, I’m still doing that 2-year uni course, but it’s fine; a long time is a good time in PWE).
The magic of the 28-day breakthrough course comes from small, daily acts of living with intention and consciously priming one’s reticular activation system, the network of neurons that are a conduit between our attention, intention, and material reality.
When I finish this round, I will check out On Being’s ‘Hope Portal’. Then maybe I'll go for my third breakthrough ✨️
Let me know in the comments if you’ve done Chani’s course. How'd you go?
Raptorial Writes
A monthly writing prompt
This one is a two-part, week-long process:
Create a scene with collage (op shops are a great source of magazines). Place your collage somewhere where you’ll look at it each day, and over the course of 7 days, allow your subconscious to go where it may. There's no need to do anything, just look at it intentionally, then go about your day. Do not take any notes.
On day 7, after one last look at your collage, set a timer for 20 minutes and write!
I’d love to know how you go! Post your writing to Instagram using #RaptorialWrites, or share it in the comments here.
Raptorial Bites
A monthly short story book club
This month’s read is Edwidge Danticat’s Sunrise, Sunset, which was published in The New Yorker in September 2017.