Let Confidence Follow Evidence

Practice. For three weeks, keep a plain log, on paper or in a file only you see. Each time you complete a writing action, add one line: the date, what you did, what now exists that did not. Count a reread, a rewritten paragraph, a sent query. Do not count intentions, and do not require a streak; record gaps without comment. When the three weeks are up, read the log as if it described someone else and write three sentences: what this record shows you can do, what it does not show, and the next thing it would be reasonable to attempt. Copy the third sentence onto the first line of next week’s page. It is a declared target with three weeks of dated lines under it.

Among Octavia E. Butler’s papers is a commonplace book in which she wrote notes to herself. One reads: “I shall be a bestselling writer.” It goes on to say that her novels would reach the bestseller lists whether publishers pushed them hard or not, whether she was paid a high advance or not, and it ends by resolving to find the way. The Library of America, which published the note, adds that she did not realize this ambition in her lifetime. Her novel Parable of the Sower reached the New York Times bestseller list in September 2020, more than fourteen years after her death.

The note looks like confidence manufactured by declaration, but Butler’s own essay, “Positive Obsession,” describes something else. She says she “couldn’t fake” herself out. She had doubts, and she describes relying on persistence in spite of fear and doubt, which she calls positive obsession. She sold two stories at twenty-three, by her account, and then nothing for five years, and for those years nothing external confirmed her. She had the continued writing.

Confidence, in the authors’ usage, is a justified expectation that you can do the next thing, with a record of having done similar things under imperfect conditions as its basis, and so it comes after the acts. A declared target held ahead of the facts can still be a useful instrument for some writers. The claim here is only that it works best paired with a record, and that Butler’s essay credits persistence. A record of practice is not a record of quality. A log that says I wrote does not say it was good (see Practice 97 on how to read the responses). It supports the confidence to continue, but not the confidence to stop revising or stop seeking readers.