“There’s no wrong or right, just write.”

I’m not entirely surely where that quote is from or who said it, but I saw it when I first started to write the novel ‘It Will Always Be You.’ and it’s really stuck with me. I think I even may have made an inspirational Instagram post about it.

I love writing. I love creative writing, academic writing, writing lyrics or poems, I even love a good letter of complaint! (I was always best at that when I was at school, don’t mess with me.) But for the amount I love for writing, there comes an equal amount of self-doubt.

My mind will scream at me while I’m writing:
“No one’s going to read it.” “Well, that doesn’t make sense.” “BORRRING!”

For a long time, I would listen to what my self-doubt monster was telling me and I would hold back, but the times I have told the monster to get in the bin, I’ve always has positive feedback.

I remember the first time I shared anything I ever wrote. It was on Tumblr (remember when that was the biz and not just full of porn?) and I posted a part of a story I was writing. Okay, it was a fanfic, but listen, we all start somewhere! Anyway, it got so many likes and I had many messages telling me how good it was. A message I specifically remember was someone saying it was, ‘the most well written fanfic she had ever read.’ and although I don’t know how tragic the other fanfics she read were, it was still positive feedback that’s stook with me for the last 10 years.

But even though I had that positive feedback, you know what I never did? Finish the fanfic. I talked myself into the idea that doing that would be a bad thing because anything else I could write wouldn’t be as good as that segment I had shared. Does that make sense? No? I didn’t think so.

I didn’t do anymore creative writing until I was severely depressed, and I decided to create a story I could lose myself in; it was the only way I could feel anything. Sadly, my laptop decided it’s time had come, and it passed away (RIP) and that story was never to be seen again. Until 2019, when I had a relapse in my depression and I decided it was time to pick up on that story and rewrite it; this then became It Will Always Be You.’.

After years of academic writing instead of creative, it was hard to get into, but I relaxed and thought ‘there’s no wrong or right, just write.’ and ended up with 70,000 words and a novel that contained my heart and soul.

I had my reservations and I didn’t want to share it, but I did; I shared it with two of my best friends.
One friend gave me good feedback.
One friend gave me bad feedback.

My Tumblr self from 10 years ago would have solely listened to the bad feedback and gave up completely. But my current self said no, I will listen to both. And so, I changed the ‘bad’ bits to make them better and I’ve learnt from it. I’m proud of the things I write, and that one friend that didn’t like it didn’t assist my self-doubt monster in climbing out of the bin, my self-doubt monster instead just stays where it is.

Not everyone is going to like everything, that’s a fact of life. But that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong or right, because at the end of the day, that’s the rule I now write by: There’s no wrong or right, just write.