Combatting Confirmation Bias: How Our Brains Impact Our Self-Confidence & Strategies to Improve It

I know so many talented writers. Writers whose words are so beautiful they will make your heart ache, whose stories are so hilarious they bring tears to your eyes from laughing. Some of these writers are published or will be soon, many are not, for a variety of reasons. Like me, the vast majority of my writing friends wish to have their books traditionally published, which means not just writing a book, but finding an agent who then, if everything goes well, sells the book on submission to a publisher. 

I have a confession to make. I’m slightly terrified for some of these friends to one day get a book deal. 

It’s not, as you might anticipate, out of any kind of fear that their deal will be bigger than mine or that they will become some kind of bestseller and leave me in the dust. I hope both of those things happen (except for the leaving-me-in-the-dust part)! It isn’t because I don’t think their books deserve to be published, because they do, and I sincerely hope they are because it feels so incredibly unfair sometimes to have had the privilege of reading their work when so many others aren’t able to do that. 

My fear instead comes from worrying what will happen when they realize that getting an agent or even a book deal isn’t going to be enough to permanently quiet the part of themselves that doesn’t recognize their own talent or that feels like a fraud. Because here is a hard truth: Getting a book deal is amazing, yes, but also opens up a whole new world of ways for you to feel inferior about your writing.

Traditional publishing is slow. Incredibly slow. You’ll go months hearing nothing from your agent or your editor. If you join a debut Slack or Discord group, or as you get to meet other authors in your debut year, you’ll learn that someone got a bigger advance than you or a two- or three-book deal to your one. Someone else will be nominated for an award that you won’t be, or will win an award that you didn’t. Someone else’s cover will come out faster, or they’ll have a bigger, splashier cover reveal. Someone will receive more marketing support than you, will receive blurbs from bigger name authors, or an author that said they were too busy to blurb your book. Someone will sell foreign rights to a dozen countries or have a big name director or producer interested in optioning their story, while all you’re hearing is silence. 

And all the things I just mentioned? These are things that can happen even before the official start of your debut year!

Look, we all feel self-doubt sometimes–and if you’ve never once felt even a bit of self-doubt, I actually think that is a big problem in a different way. I’m not talking about that. 

I think most of us will identify with some of the items on this list, but if you find yourself identifying with (nearly) all of them, and constantly, then this post is probably talking to you in particular:

1a) After you have your work critiqued, you give extra weight to feedback from someone you perceive to be more “successful” than you, even when they do not read or write your genre, or their feedback does not resonate / makes you feel bad about yourself

OR

1b) You weigh all suggestions equally, without regard to a person’s experience with your genre, the quality of their own writing, or the quality of their feedback to other writers 

2) After having your work critiqued, you remember every remotely critical comment, but none of the positive ones

3) Other writing friends have expressed confusion / shock / dismay at how negatively you perceive a critique to have gone, and have had to remind you how much others actually enjoyed your work

4) You consistently believe criticism or negative opinions of your work, but disbelieve praise or positive comments and / or believe that people are being truthful when they give you criticism, but lying when they tell you what they enjoyed in your work

5) You’ve tossed or drastically overhauled a story you’d been really excited about (even one that was well into the drafting stage), or stopped writing for an unusually extended period of time because of a single person’s negative or critical feedback, or after the first bit of rejection.

And finally,

6) You’ve said “If I just get an agent or a book deal, I’ll never doubt myself again.”

There’s a quote from the Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower that I think about a lot: “We accept the love we think we deserve.” That wasn’t a quote about writers, but it easily could have been. 

When two equally talented writers come out of a workshop, one feeling bad about their work, the other feeling good about theirs, it is rarely because the second’s was received better. As someone who is usually the second, I should know. 

Our brains are not objective interpreters of reality. Someone who doesn’t maintain a core internal belief in their own work will prioritize feedback or experiences that reinforce that belief. This is known as confirmation bias. 

So what then? you might be asking. What do I do if I’m one of these people? Am I doomed to forever be unhappy? 

The good news is that I absolutely do not believe that. I believe awareness of our brains’ biases is the first step in combating them. 

Next, let’s talk strategy — because for most people, just being aware of this internal bias isn’t enough to combat it. These tips might not all work for you, but hopefully you’ll find some strategies that do: 

• If you are workshopping your writing in a class or with a critique group, write down only the positive feedback and praise. There has been plenty of research on the impact of note-taking on later recall, and you can use this in your favor. If your brain is inclined to focus disproportionally on criticism or critique, writing down only the positive feedback will help you not just remember it better, but you will come away with a record of the positive things that were said in real time that you can read later when you’re convinced no one likes your work
• Pay attention to the feedback your critique partners / classmates give to other writers. Who do you feel has the most insightful comments? Whose feedback feels designed to help the author’s story become the best version of itself? Who consistently ignores other authors’ intentions and attempts to impose their own vision onto the book? Whose feedback, both positive and critical, feels consistently honest? Now hold those things in mind when those same people provide feedback on your book. If you consistently trust someone’s feedback and intentions when they give it to other stories, why not yours? If you think someone gives low quality feedback to other writers, why are you putting so much stock into their words when it comes to yours?
• After a critique, ask someone in the group whose opinion you trust to recap the critique for you — it’s likely they will have a much more balanced take on the feedback you received.
• Go back and reread something you wrote and haven’t looked at in awhile. Impress yourself by remembering either how talented you are–or, if you’re less impressed, by how far you’ve come since writing that old piece!
• Treat yourself like you’d treat a friend – what would you say to a friend who came to you struggling with confidence in their own writing? Extend that same confidence-boosting compassion to yourself.
• Write something just for yourself, something you have no intention of showing to anyone else, something that reminds you why you began writing in the first place.
• Keep a positivity journal — record your victories, big and small. Include things like sitting down to write after a hard week, having a breakthrough on a story that excites you, writing a sentence or a paragraph you’re particularly proud of, even taking a step you’ve been afraid to take, such as submitting your work to a contest or querying agents. 

Finally, remember that confirmation bias doesn’t just have to work against us – it can work for us, too. The stronger your internal belief is for yourself and your work, the more likely it is that your brain will prioritize and remember information that supports that. Obviously there’s a danger in this as well, but today’s post isn’t for those of us with already over-inflated egos!

Writing is hard, and I think those of us who choose to do it, and then return and do it some more are honestly superheroes. But each of us does it for a reason, and I think the world is a better place for it. 

And in case you need some positive words to start you off on this journey towards self-belief, let me end with this: 

I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad to be in community with you as fellow writers. I’m proud of you for showing up for yourself and your work, and I can’t wait to read your stories someday. 

Do you struggle with confidence in yourself as a writer, or in your work? Do you have strategies that have worked for you in improving your self-confidence? 

Feel free to leave some words of encouragement in the comments as well! Both for yourself and for other writers in this WU community.