Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Confidence vs. Self-doubt

Nathan Bransford has written a wonderful post on the differences and similarities between confidence and self-doubt and how they affect our writing. It's worth the trip to GO READ.

4 comments:

Vicky Alvear Shecter said...

Yeah, well finding that balance, I'm sure, doesn't mean ricocheting from one end to the other like I do (LOL). Interesting article.

Elizabeth O Dulemba said...

Oh, I don't know. I call this business an emotional roller coaster for a reason! e

Unknown said...

Some of what Nathan talks about is tied to what's been observed with the Dunning-Kruger effect, where (at least in our culture) the incompetent tend to overestimate their own abilities, and the competent tend to underestimate them.

(Couple this with the observation that we take the predictions of confident people more seriously, and we might have some explanations for more than a few modern societal problems...)

And, yes, as my career takes a hard left turn into territory I never imagined it would I'm in the midst of huge wracking self-doubt surrounding my writing and how I'm connecting with my audience (which is drastically different from yours).

Elizabeth O Dulemba said...

Dan - Indeed! I like to think I'm somewhere in the middle. Because, as an illustrator as well, it's downright dangerous not to have some idea of where your abilities fall. How on earth would you appropriately market yourself?

But in this time of tough economics and challenging technology, I think most creative fields are dealing with some "hard left turn"s! Wishing you much success with yours! e