confidence

Quick Link: How To Boost Your Writing Confidence To New Levels

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Happy New Year to everyone! To start the new year off right and ease on into things, I am sharing an inspirational post from at Bang 2 Write!

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How To Boost Your Writing Confidence To New Levels

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Being a writer might be challenging, as creative people very often worry their work is not good enough. Lacking confidence can be immobilising and may influence the quality of your writing, too. Eek! But calm down and check out these simple ideas and exercises that can boost your confidence and make your creative genius shine.

1) Use writing prompts

Many creative people know that writing prompts is one of the basic exercises to develop your writing skills. Prompts are extremely useful  if you have writer’s block or simply want to develop yourself as a writer. The prompt can be anything:a word, a phrase, a picture, a person or just a thought. It can help you write focusing on one thing at a time and make your creative juices flow. MORE: 6 Writing Prompt Tips To Get You Started

Read the full post on Bang 2 Write!

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Is Being a “Good” Girl Hurting Your Career? Why “Bad” Girls Become Best-Sellers

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

This one is for all the ladies out there, especially you nasty women! Ok, it is for everyone who needs it, men or women, nasty or not. It is not about being nice or bad, but about being confident and taking chances. I feel this one. Thank you Kristen Lamb for another great post.

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Is Being a “Good” Girl Hurting Your Career? Why “Bad” Girls Become Best-Sellers

by Kristen Lamb

Smiling businesswoman standing in front her colleagues
It is really about standing up for yourself and having confidence, which is easier said than done

Today is a repost because of a death in the family last week. But you know what? Life moves on.  I chose this post because we all need a good kick in the ass now and again, even ME.

It was a FUN post and a good way to get my moxie back….because seriously my moxie got kicked in the face last week. I am sure NONE of you have been there. Feeling like a failure, like nothing you do matters?

Well, get over it. We are going to have a hell raising Monday!

Last fall I read Kate White’s I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This: Success Secrets Every Gutsy Girl Should Know. There are bad books, okay books, good books and great books. But there is another kind of book and it’s the rarest.

The game-changer.

White has a witty, sassy style. She is seamlessly intelligent and down-to-earth in her fiction. And guess what? Her nonfiction delivers more of the same.

Back to our topic of being too damn nice for our own good.

Good Girls Don’t Become Best-Sellers

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Teachers, Writers, Speakers: On Confidence & Owning Your True Authority

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This post, by Susan Piver, originally appeared on her blog on 12/19/13.

Recently I began working with a master coach to develop my public speaking chops. While watching a video together of a recent talk I gave, he pointed out to me every instance where I gave away my authority, whether through intonation or body language. It was eye-opening to say the least. “See how you’re rocking from foot to foot? That’s what teenagers do when they’re asking to borrow the car.” “Notice how your intonation goes up at the end of most sentences? It appears as if you are questioning yourself which actually causes the audience to question you.” And so on.

It was crazy and also embarrassing. I had never noticed these things about myself.

When planning a talk, I think about what I can offer that is useful and what words I might use to express my ideas. Throughout, I ride a roller coaster of self-doubt. Do I really have the right to teach? There are actual experts on this topic and I know I’m not one of them. What if a real expert is in the audience? What could I possibly add to this topic that hasn’t already been said more effectively by countless people? And so on. The thing is, I thought I was hiding all of this. Come to find out, I was not. The disconnect between verbal and non-verbal communication was palpable.

As he pointed all of this out to me, I realized that this was not the first time I had heard some version of, “Please own your authority.”

I remembered a time I submitted the first draft of a manuscript to a publisher which was sent back to me with the following note: “Susan, please delete all such phrases: ‘it seems this way to me, but it may not to you,’ or ‘this is my opinion; you may disagree,’ and ‘this is what I learned; you may find otherwise.’ Not only is it confusing to the reader, it is irritating.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Susan Piver’s blog.