As a writer, I’ve found that I’m always between the feelings of “Wow. This is amazing!” and “Why on earth would anyone want to read what I have to say?!”

We all feel it. That dread and anxiety of possibly never being good enough, and more than that, we’re shown it through a number of crisp rejection letters awaiting us in the mail. Or a quick email back letting us know that we’re just not quite there.

So what do you do when your best may never be good enough?

Well, you can cast all your work aside and find a different path in life. You can fall down the rabbit hole of self-hatred and destruction. You can shrug and walk away from it.

Or you can just keep writing.

I made a promise to myself before I started on my novel. I promised to be true to me. If my book never gets published, that’s okay! I’m not writing this novel because I want to be published. I’m writing this book because it’s a story begging me to tell it.

Do I hope one day I can share the story with all of you? Absolutely! I hope one day it is a story that is begging you to read it.

But my success will not be measured by how many purchased it or how many book are in print. My success will be in completing the story’s request to be written.

On Twitter, I see new authors asking for help and for advice and mentioning their fears and worries about publishing, and I always try to encourage them.

Someone once told me they didn’t think that their opinion would matter to anyone else, but I disagree.

I think even a novice writer can have a helpful perspective that someone who has been entrenched in piles of papers wouldn’t see without them.

So, in those moments when you’re feeling insignificant or terrible, remember that everyone feels that way. No one gains success without pushing through the doubts and worries, even the most famous of writers.

Write your story! Share your poems. And encourage and help those around you.

It doesn’t matter how long the story takes to be written; what matters is that you wrote it. Not everyone will always love your work, but to some, you will be the most brilliant person they’ve ever read.

We’re all in this together, so let’s put a pencil to our temple and connect it to our brains. We’re not going to throw away our shot!

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