When In Doubt, Do The Work

by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

I keep a list of words and phrases. A little collection. The words come from anywhere and everywhere: something overheard, a commercial on the radio, a snippet from the news, a little something from an ad in a magazine. Something from a dream. Something from anywhere. Sometimes it is one lone word that for some reason strikes me. Maybe it’s the way it sounds in that particular moment—the roundness of it or the brittleness. It could be anything at all and I don’t usually try to unravel why.

Photo: Carole Nickerson

I go to the list when I need a little inspiration or a starting point. Recently, as my eyes lightly moved down the list, the phrase Full of Doubt caught me.

Why had I jotted that down? What made me pause when I’d heard it or read it somewhere? Not that I am unfamiliar with doubt, but still, full of it? What was I feeling that day?

I Googled doubt and writers. A lot of how-to’s resulted. How to fight doubt, how to beat back doubt, self-help for writer’s with doubt, the “horrors” of writer’s doubt. I don’t want to write about the how-to here today. Although, many of the ideas are useful. But rather than fight it, I would prefer to reflect on ways to put it to work for me instead of against me.

Doubt keeps me from doing the work and makes me focus on the reasons why it is legitimately difficult to do the work. It is difficult, but focusing on that makes it easier to imagine how wonderful things will be someday when I finally “have time to be a writer.” It’s going to be so great, you know. There is this sense—semi-conscious as it may be—that if I think of being a writer as something I will be “someday,” I will never have to find out if I am not good enough to actually be a writer. This is my base fear.

So, it seems, doubt is fear in disguise. So doubt is good—it provides an opportunity to decipher fears. What am I afraid of? So, I guess when I feel doubt, I should reflect that it is fear, define and dispel it. Then, do the work.

And is doubt (and I can’t believe I am about to admit this) an opportunity for self-pity? Why would I want to feel that? Because, yet again, it is another reason to avoid the work. If I avoid the work, I never have to find out if I am ultimately destined to fail. Ouch. That’s the truth, isn’t it?

So, when in doubt, Melissa, do the work.

How do you handle writer’s doubt?

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