#IWSG: Faking It

To quote something from my current WIP: the ability to pretend she knew what she was doing was often more valuable than actually knowing.

Do any of you feel that way with this writing thing? Like sometimes you're just pretending to know what you're doing instead of actually knowing? I sure do---in pretty much every step of the process: the actual writing, the querying, especially the marketing. I've taken every step forward that I needed to to get where I am, but not usually with a great deal of confidence. It's more like...m'okay, let's do this & see what happens.

Occasionally what happens is that I find myself in over my head. Like when Savvy Authors invited me to submit a proposal for an article, so I did, and they accepted. I sent out an excited Tweet and then thought...Aw crap, now I've got to write this thing.  And what do I know about Finding the Hooks Within Your Manuscript?

The only way I was able to get myself started was by faking it---writing as if I knew what I was talking about. And by the end, I felt like, hey, maybe I have been learning as I go along and maybe I do know just a little bit more on the subject than I'd thought. So I guess that's my pep talk this month: boldly go forth as if you know what you're doing...and maybe you'll find out that you actually do.

This post is for the March 2014 edition of the Insecure Writer's Support group, founded by the one and clonely Alex J. Cavanaugh.