Pushback from Myself (Holly Schindler)

 

Nobody writes without enduring negativity. 

Sometimes, a lot of negativity. 

Rejection, negative reviews, etc., etc. 

When I graduated and decided to give writing full-time attention, I even got negative response from some of those in my English department. Kind of a, Yeah, okay, you do that, Thoreau kind of response. 

But the worst negativity? The kind that actually did feel like pushback? The kind that did the most to drag me backward, keep me from making progress?

It came from me. 

Oh, sure, maybe I could say the cause of my own negativity, my doubt, my you're not as good as you think you are came from the outside rejection...

But the thing is, you don't have to let that stuff take root. 

I've come to think the hardest part of any negative response--especially a review or critique--is that you have to let it in. You can't dismiss every single negative comment. If you did, you'd never grow. But you can't allow it to make you feel less worthy. You can't get in the spiral of thinking you just plain aren't good enough. You don't let negativity take root by simply getting to work. Distancing yourself enough to figure out what you really can see validity in, what you really can work with, and then getting your fingers to the keyboard.

That much, I could figure out pretty quickly. Honestly.

What I'm not good with? 

Inactivity. 

It drives me crazy. A long stretch with nothing happening--no contracts, no requests from editors or agents? That can really start to mess with my mind. That can feel like pushback, the absolute worst of all negative responses. 

And then I can start to pile on--an overactive brain showing me over and over again the progress I'm not making. It begins to feel like utter failure. 

The only way to push against that, I've found, is to make something happen on my own. Again--just get moving. Indie-publish a book. Start a newsletter. Find a way to get my words out there, where they can be seen.

That's how I stop the internal pushback.

~

Holly Schindler is the author of the MG The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky.