Stop worrying about if you’re good

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last week I wrote about how Cory Doctorow separates how he feels about his writing from the writing itself.

Annie Dillard would agree:

“Another luxury for an idle imagination is the writer’s own feeling about the work. There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.” “The Writer’s Life”, page 15

Separate your writing from how you feel about your writing

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve written about how Cory Doctorow consciously separates how he feels about his writing from the writing itself:

“My writing epiphany was there was no relation to the way I felt about the words I was writing and their objective quality. … You can’t tell what’s good and what’s bad while you’re writing it. … Once you start thinking about what you’re writing, you lose the ability to stop writing it.”

Writingfeelings on Isak's Blog

Stop worrying about if you’re good

Separate your writing from how you feel about your writing