Some comments related to an excellent blog post about the ABC model of Rational-Emotive Therapy and being a writer.

One of the blogs I’ve included in my RSS feed reader is called Writer Unboxed. It presents anywhere from 5 to 10 blog posts related to writing each week. Some are extremely specific, such as a recent post about including blurbs with published books. Others are more general, such as the one I’m touching upon today, which discusses psychology.

If you’re serious about writing, whether for yourself or for publication and (hopefully) profit, this is a great blog to follow. I won’t say that I read every post in detail, because I don’t. But I find that many of the ones I do read give me lots of food for thought. I usually share my thoughts in a comment on the blog post — that’s why I really like blogs that allow commenting — but sometimes those comments will trigger a blog post here. That’s what happened today.

The Post

The post that triggered these thoughts and this post is called “The Rational-Irrational Writer” by Therese Walsh. It discusses something called Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET):

…developed by psychologist Albert Ellis. At the heart of RET is a simple but powerful framework that explains how rational and irrational beliefs shape distinct emotional responses: the “ABC model.”

I don’t want to copy and paste Ms Walsh’s post into my blog. I want you to go and read her post, or at least the section titled “An Overabundance of ‘B’,” which explains the ABC(DE) model. It’s short and easy to read and understand. It’ll just take you a second. I’ll wait here.

[calming music plays]

Back? Great!

The post then goes on to explain exactly how the ABC(DE) model applies to writers and our deep-seated fears about calling ourselves writers and being good enough and having all kinds of preconceived beliefs that just aren’t true.

Not Just for Writers!

Everything she’s written is completely valid for writers. But it’s also valid for other people in other endeavors, as I commented on that blog post:

First, this is a great piece that can easily be applied to any endeavor where we have self-doubts.

I’ll elaborate on that here, since I didn’t think it was appropriate on her blog post which is, after all, for writers. I’ll use one of my endeavors as an example: silversmithing.

A stands for activating event. Suppose I apply to a juried art show. (That’s an art show where a panel of judges decide, based on photos of your work, whether your work is appropriate for the show. It usually comes down to quality, originality, etc., but it might also deal with appropriateness for a show’s theme.) I get the jury response and discover that I’m not invited to the show. Being turned down is the activating event.

B stands for belief. On getting turned down, I naturally come to believe that my work is just not good enough.

C stands for consequence. As a consequence of this belief, I start doubting my skills, capabilities, and creativity. I start wondering why I bother to make jewelry and debate whether it’s worth continuing.

D stands for disputation. This is where I (hopefully) start gathering evidence to prove that the belief is wrong. Maybe I applied for six new shows last year and was invited to all of them. Maybe my work sells well at the shows I do attend. Maybe I visit a new wholesale client and she buys half my inventory because she loves it so much. Maybe I discover that the reason I did not get invited to this show was because they limit the number of jewelry artists and all of last year’s artists are returning. (It’s pretty common to give preference to artists who attend each year.)

E stands for effective (and rational) beliefs. I consider all the evidence that my initial belief is wrong and self-defeating and cast it aside to replace it with a more realistic belief that keeps me motivated, working, and improving my skills, allowing me to move forward.

Think about this for a minute and I’m sure you can apply it to anything you do that you might have doubts about.

Imposter Syndrome?

I think Rational-Emotive Therapy can help folks with imposter syndrome. Per Wikipedia:

Impostor syndrome, also known as impostor phenomenon or impostorism, is a psychological experience in which a person suffers from feelings of intellectual and/or professional fraudulence. One source defines it as “the subjective experience of perceived self-doubt in one’s abilities and accomplishments compared with others, despite evidence to suggest the contrary.”

Those who suffer from impostor syndrome often doubt their skills, talents, or accomplishments. They may have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as frauds. Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon do not believe they deserve their success or luck. They may think that they are deceiving others because they feel as if they are not as intelligent as they outwardly portray themselves to be.

Clearly, believing that you are an “imposter” is irrational. After all, you got where you are somehow. Thinking about the situation rationally and disputing those self-defeating beliefs is the first step to getting past imposter syndrome.

‘Nuff said.

One More Word about Writers

I thought I’d share one more thing related to the original post. This is part of the comment I left on that post and it has everything to do with writing or being a writer.

Before I share it, however, I want to remind readers who don’t know me very well that I earned a very good living as writer from around 1990 to 2015. I wrote books about how to use computers at a time when writers couldn’t produce them fast enough to meet the demand from readers, many of whom were just getting started using computers. Things are different now and I doubt many people could make a good living doing this kind of work. But I enjoyed it while it lasted and had a backup career waiting for me (as a helicopter pilot, of all things) when the demand for my kind of books died off.

Here’s what I shared:

I think there are two kinds of writers, with plenty of overlap.

One kind is the writer that I believe that all of us here are: the kind of person who is driven to write, to get words out of our heads and into a format we can share with others. Whether we share it or not is irrelevant. Whether it’s published or not is irrelevant. As you said, writers write. I believe that deep down in my heart. I have been a writer since I was 13.

The other kind of writer is the professional writer: someone who literally writes for some kind of pay. Hopefully, the pay is money, since it’s so much more useful than “exposure,” which too many of us seem to accept. I felt comfortable during my 25 year writing career telling people that I was a writer because that’s how I earned my living. Nowadays, I still write — after all, I’m still that first kind of writer — and I do get paid for some of it, but it’s not how I earn my living. So when people ask now what I do, I don’t tell them I’m a writer.

There’s nothing wrong with being that first kind of writer.