Remember those Saturday morning cartoons - the character has to make a decision but there's an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other and they're offering conflicting advice.
Now transfer that image to you as you write and the angel and devil become the forces of faith and doubt. An easy choice, right?
Not so says Palumbo in the next chapter of Writing from the Inside Out. We want faith to win over doubt but he says it's a mistake to try to banish doubt. "Just as courage has no meaning without fear, faith has no meaning without doubt. They're the yin and yang of all aspiration." (p. 73)
I know that's true of my teaching. My doubts are what force me to be a better teacher. They're what I see when I evaluate a year or a lesson and look to see what I can improve. After all these years, I certainly have faith in my talent as a teacher, but doubt keeps me fresh, keeps me doing professional development.
It's interesting to me then, to see how that translates to my writing. Yes, my doubt there also makes me strive to learn more, to study craft, but it's also far more apt to paralyze me, send me into a spiral of negative thinking.
Just like that envy from yesterday, we're supposed to learn to access faith and doubt and use them. "The plain fact is, the more willing you are to mine the landscape of your own doubts, the truer and more recognizably human your own characters will be." (p. 73).
So, go forth and doubt yourself.
And have a great day.
Doubt myself? Oh heck, I can do that. In fact I do it all the time. Using that doubt creatively? Ah, that's where it gets difficult, doesn't it?
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