Confidence Breakdown==Repaired By Good Friend

CONFIDENCE BREAKDOWN==REPAIRED BY GOOD FRIEND

Hello, and welcome to Tabby’s Nocturnal Nights. My name is Brenda. Today I’m going to talk about an incident that happened to me this past week. And I would like to dedicated this post to a dear friend of mine.

            I’m a fairly confident person. In fact, I don’t like doing anything half-assed. And I really hate not doing something well, or with confidence. Nothing bugs the Be-Jesus out of me more than lack of self esteem.

            Just to show you how confident I can be, ask me to draw you a picture of a horse.

No problem I’ll say. Not only will I draw you a picture of the best damn horse you’ve ever seen, but I’ll paint it too. It will look so damn real you’ll think it’s a live horse on a canvas. Ask me to draw you a picture of a video game character, or a cartoon character and my answer will be the same. Sure, no problem.

Did you hear the confidence? LOL, okay, I’m really not an ego maniac, but when it comes to drawing and painting, I know what I’m doing. I have no doubt in my ability.

Same goes for singing. When I’m alone I’m the best damn singer going, lol. Okay, that was just a joke.

But . . . when it comes to writing, my confidence wanes sometimes. LOL, yep, you guessed it, it drives me nuts.

When I started writing I started from scratch—just a story idea and a few ideas of whom my characters would be. Since I hate not knowing what I’m doing, I took a long writing course that covered tons—from plotting to the finished product. I still take courses.

I’m not saying I know everything—far from it--but I have also been in this writing gig for awhile now. I’ve been at the bottom of the barrel. I’ve scrapped and clawed, learned, tore apart my MS, rewrote over and over until I thought I had it where I wanted it minus a few tweaks here and there. I’m certainly no pro, but I’m certainly no newb either.

My skin has been burnt, ripped, sliced, and skinned off over the years I’ve been on this writing journey. It has peeled and then healed with scars to prove I’ve earned the right to have a “little” confidence in my writing ability. I now proudly sport what I call troll armor.

This past week my confidence took a major hit, like a baseball ball being wacked out of the park. I stumbled backwards and fell down that long, dank tunnel of despair until I hit the bottom. I looked around and cried, whispering, “Not this place again. I thought I’d seen the last of it.” Obviously not. I sat down in the corner, wrapped my arms around my knees and went over and over what had brought on this latest breakdown.

I’m not going to go into details about the incident that brought this latest trip to the well of hopelessness, but suffice it to say, my troll armor had disappeared.

That day I walked around the house like a robot, thinking and analyzing. When my husband talked to me I replied with one word answers. Finally, he gave up trying to figure out what was wrong. I didn’t bother telling him. He’s not a writer; he wouldn’t understand.

The next day, my Troll friend emailed me. She had no clue about my vacation back to hell, and at first I was going to keep it to myself because I should be able to handle this. In reality, I should NOT be allowing this to affect me so much. But doubt was back with a vengeance and I snapped.

I emailed her—just a brief message, but she knew right away something was wrong. She messaged back and asked me what was up. That was all it took. I replied back. LOL, my fingers flew over the keys, swear words everywhere: F-in this, F-in that. At one point I hit the Caps lock key, because I was yelling. Not at her, but about what happened and my recent trip down Doubt Lane.

Through my ramblings, swears and shouts she figured out what had happened. So this dear troll friend, with a heart of gold, did the most amazing thing—really, about the only thing that would have worked to pull me up out of the pit. She took a look at what had me all kafuffled and she proceeded to analyze it. She sent me back her findings and her thoughts.

She basically told me what I already knew, but I just needed to hear it from another writer—one that I trust and respect immensely. One who knows my story, my characters, and my voice inside and out. Single handedly, she reached down that long shaft, grasped my hand, and hauled me back into the sun.

Once I was back in the land of the living, she sent me another massage, telling me to put back on my troll armor, pull up my big girl panties, and trust in myself and my abilities—trust in my story.

This may sound melodramatic, but she saved my life that day—my sanity—and I can never thank her enough. I would like her to know how much her help, her confidence in me and my writing abilities helped me not only that day, but every day. And I hope she knows if ever the favor needs to be returned, I will be the first one by her side.

Thanks again, Troll.