Confidence

These days I’m working on re-writing my first young adult book. Behind the Eyes was initially published by Dutton in 2006 and when Dutton decided not to re-print the book, they graciously agreed to “revert” the rights to the story to me and Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic graciously bought the rights to the story. I worked on re-writing the story for a couple of years with my editor Cheryl Klein back in 2012 but I got stuck. I got lost in the writing and the editing process and the direction and unifying theme of the book got unduly complicated and confused. So I decided, with my editor’s blessing, to put this book aside and work on something new. And so I worked on The Memory of Light, the book I just finished and which is scheduled to come out in the Spring of 2016. What I’ve been thinking about as I start again on Behind the Eyes is about confidence and what it means for the writer and the writing process. I’ve been thinking about confidence because one way of looking at the previous re-writing of this book is that it was a failure. Something happened in that process that did not work. Something not good happened in my mind and on the page. I’ve been re-reading what I wrote back then and it just doesn’t sound right (although I remember sending that last version to Cheryl thinking that it was good). So you can see why the idea of confidence may have entered my mind as I contemplate what happened with this book not too long ago. What does it mean to write with confidence? I also like the word “authority” and to some extent to write with confidence and to write with authority are similar. The first thing I want to say, to get it out of the way, is that there is some pretending when you write with confidence. Pretending in the sense that I choose to write as if I had no doubts. Doubts are there, of course, but I am overriding them. I am choosing to believe that I am a good enough writer to write this story even if there’s a little voice that says that maybe I’m not. When I go in front of an audience and there is fear in me, I choose not to show this fear and instead I choose to present a person who is calm and comfortable with his subject matter. If this choosing to act one way when there is a part of you that feels different is like pretending than so be it. To write with confidence is to pretend that you are good enough to write this story. And as C.S. Lewis said of faith, one starts by acting as if one believes and ends up believing. Because confidence in writing, like faith, is something that comes, that happens in the doing. The “acting as if” opens the door to your heart so that the grace of belief can enter. There’s something else about confidence that strikes me. As I write I’m aware of the rules of writing, of the accepted precepts that make the kind of book I’m writing readable and interesting to young readers. But confidence takes those precepts and gives them a unique twist, a twist that comes from me, from who I am as a person and as a writer. Confidence allows me to take risks, to challenge myself, to surprise myself. (And it is in taking risks that I gain confidence) And if I surprise myself and discover new characters, new ways of saying something, then maybe my readers too will be surprised and will share in my joy at finding something new. Finally, I keep in mind, that confidence is not arrogance. My “failure” in the writing this same book is still in my mind. The confidence I seek is founded on humility. Humility is that middle-way between thinking you’re worth more than others and thinking you’re worth less. Humility, like confidence is knowing you’re good enough to write this story.