Let’s explore what it means to write confidently.
“You have to believe in yourself – at the same time you need to have doubt, because it means you are creating something.
If you have no doubt …
If you are too sure of yourself
you close your mind.
I’m sure the customer can feel it.
Be sure and at the same time be open”JEAN CLAUDE ELLENA, Hermes perfumer
I watched a BBC perfume documentary while researching my next book, and it illustrated how perfume making is an art. I loved the fascinating segment with the perfumer Jean Claude Ellena giving advice about the creative process to students.
I watched the documentary on Amazon Prime: Part 1: Something Old, Something New, and the quote is from a scene with John Claude Ellena in Part 2: Bottling the Memory.
Ellena makes a bold declaration that you must doubt yourself. It is a necessary part of the process, as long as you continue to have faith in what you create, in yourself, and in your art.
Just because something has worked in the past doesn’t mean you have to or should do the same again. Don’t “close your mind”, Ellena advises, “Be open.”
In my case, writing a story is only the first step; polishing (or revision) takes more time and really challenges me. Sometimes I will reject what I’ve been working on because of one key element, such as tone, pacing, or lack of tension in a scene. Mostly, I go by nebulous feelings. The story doesn’t feel right – something is wrong with it – and I can’t always express or understand what that is until I dig deeper into the character’s motivations.
Why is Lillia still with the Baron in Book 2?
I hated the idea that she was just a victim. Or even worse, a passive victim without hope of escaping her dreadful circumstances. I didn’t want her to become a character that does nothing but react to outside forces.
Only recently, after working on the draft of Book 2 for months now, I think I’ve finally figured it out. I often feel as if I take one step forward and ten steps back when I work. I doubt myself all the time, and now, if I’m going to take Ellena’s advice, I need to embrace the doubt. But ultimately, I need to believe in my work.
Writing confidently is hard to build, just like writing consistently.
Does it take more experience? Is it perseverance? Haruki Murakami compared writing a novel to running a marathon. If that’s the case, I’m somewhere on an agonizing hill, still looking up as I climb, step by step. (I recommend reading his book: What I talk about when I talk about running. It’s well worth your time.)
Here’s another quote from the end of the perfume documentary:
“Perfume is an art about time.
It takes time to create, time to think about it.
Time to have it on the skin, telling its story.”
When I think about being creative, I think about time.
You have to learn your craft and the execution: writing, composing, drawing, designing, painting, and creating – this takes time.
It also takes time to share your work with people; whether by posting online, displaying in a gallery, an art show, at a conference, a bookstore, a concert hall, a perfume shop at the airport. Unless you strike lightning and your work goes viral, you wait for people to find you, and there’s the time they spend experiencing your creation, looking, listening, playing, reading, or smelling.
Once you finish one story, you will certainly start another. Are you confident in this one too? I ask myself.
I’m not sure I answered my question: how do you have confidence in your work? Living with faith. I think if you live confidently, you have faith, and that can translate into writing confidently. Easier said than done, of course, but worth trying. Faith is always worth it.