Staying Confident as a Professional Writer

Video Transcript

"REBECCA SATO: Hi. I'm Rebecca with ExpertVillage.com. And we're going to talk about how to deal with naysayers and become a successful writer in spite of it. So first of all, what's a naysayer? It's just anybody who tells you that you can't be a writer; you can't do what you want to do in the way that you want to do it. Now, I want to differentiate here because there's a difference between someone who's just trying to put you down and hold you back and someone who genuinely cares about you and wants you to be happy. So you want to handle these people differently obviously. The first example, let's just say that's the kind of person who is just negative and they're telling you that your novel isn't that great or you need to change it extensively. You can always tell the difference between constructive criticism and just plain criticism. And when you notice as far as just being critical or kind of putting you down, it's important to realize that a lot of people will tell you, you can't be a writer or that you're not going to be successful or become rich or whatever your objectives are. It's because they know that they couldn't and so they're projecting onto you that you can't. Well, that's ridiculous because you know what? Someone who is doing it is going to know that you can, don't know that you can because they're doing it and they'll project that on to you. And so I am here as a professional writer who's making a good income. And I'm telling you I know that you can do that because I'm not a genius and there's nothing super special about me. I just love to write and I'm very good at it and there you go. So I'm telling you as someone who is doing it that you can do it, and if somebody is telling you can't do it, it's simply because they can't do it. And the reason they can't do it is I don't know that's their business, but don't let it be yours. And the other thing to be aware of is that there are, of course, well-intentioned people in your life who will be concerned. And for example, maybe you're the main bread winner of your family and let's say your husband or wife is nervous that as you do more writing that what if that's not successful and they don't want you get sidetracked from this really stable career and things like that are different. And those are things that you really just have to balance. And through a lot of love and compassion and communication, work those things out but of course I--there's no sense in automatically thinking that they would be negative, but really just listen and usually you can work your concerns and everyone will be happy. So if you can do that, then I think you've got it made. So I hope that you've really gotten the idea--that you get to decide, nobody else decides. There you go."