The doubts come. Your characters seem flat, stereotypical. Your plot is going nowhere. You don't feel like much of a writer, and your production slows. You run out of inspiration, and you lose faith in your work.
I bring this up because I'm currently dealing with a loss of faith in my NaNoWriMo story. The necessity to produce to reach my daily word count has helped, but I'm still in a rough patch. My plot is dull, as well as my characters. I can't figure out a love interest or the specifics of my protagonist's personality. I can't even decide her age.
Loss of faith can hit us in a number of ways. One is creatively, like with writing. Another one I've witnessed in my sister. She's applying to colleges right now, and some low subject SAT scores have caused her to lose faith in her chances (despite an otherwise glowing application.) Now she's spending time telling herself she can't succeed rather than getting to work: she's lost sight of the goal.
So what to do when we've lost in faith in our work? Even in ourselves?
I've always found this one a difficult question to answer. When it comes to writing, I usually try to take a break from a piece, for a new perspective, which isn't much of an option here. So instead, I'm trying to remember what inspired me in the first place (as discussed in this post.) But I'm also trying to simply power through - to accept that not all of my ideas are very good, but still work with them. I have to tell myself that these words aren't wasted, but that they're helping me to craft a vision for this story. And generally, when one steps back from a story after some time, those words which seemed weak and unoriginal aren't nearly as poor as they felt during the writing process.
I guess my message is that it’s necessary for a writer to believe in herself, or if not, then to still power through, and believe that eventually she can eventually reach the level of quality she’s striving for.
How do you power through a project or rough patch despite a loss of faith?
