How to Believe in Your Writing When You’ve Lived Your Life in Books

Writers live inside their heads most of the time. They spend lifetimes in the stories of others and resent the time they have to spend focused on the basic tasks of being a human. That’s why learning how to believe in your writing can be so hard-your human experience comes from others and not necessarily your own life.

I have a theory that writers understand the world around them better than they understand themselves. The emotional pain of big, hairy scary concepts is something they’ve been dealing with since they first escaped reality in a book so far outside their reading level when they were still a kid. By the time a writer is doing their high school senior summer reading, they’ve probably read so many books they can write their thesis with little to no research needed.

(I’m writing from experience here. I wrote my high school senior thesis in a day, bashing through the draft in one go. Then, I went back and added the quotes I needed from sources in about half an hour. I made over 100% on that paper.)

But when it comes to life? Well. Shit.

I’ve lived lifetimes between the pages of books, often at the expense of my own experience. I’m getting better about it as I age, but it’s still hard remember that I don’t have all the life experience in the world…