Validation

During a recent e-mail exchange, a respected friend wrote:

You are a very good writer - stop looking to others for validation and believe in yourself and the rest will come.

My friend was right. I do seek validation that I am a good writer.

I don't think I'm alone in wanting--in needing--that validation. Don't we all seek validation in most things we do? It's one thing to think we're good. It's quite another to be told we're good, especially when we respect the ones doing the telling.

Take the people who tried to become the next American Idol, for instance. Granted, a few god-awful singers knew they were bad and just wanted their 15 minutes of fame. However, there were many more who truly thought they could sing, but couldn't. As these hopefuls sought their validation, not only from Simon, Paula and Randy, but from all America as well, we sought the entertainment value in their failure. We laughed at their horrendously out-of-tune crooning even as our guilt at finding humor in deflated egos and punctured dreams left us feeling slightly discomforted.

After all, that could easily be us, albeit in a different setting.

When we write for ourselves, for the pure enjoyment of writing, then we may not require external validation. But when we write with the intent to sell, to be read, to make a living with our words, then external validation is not just a personal requirement. It's a professional necessity.

When no one wants to publish our words, we cannot accomplish that which we set out to do. When publishers and editors fail to validate us as writers, then that belief in ourselves gets a little more slippery and harder to hold onto. Our confidence that "the rest will come" starts to waver.

However, validation of our writing must come from within before we can expect it from others. We need to trust in our innate abilities and our desire to succeed. We need to accept the frustration that comes with inexperience and deal with it. We must learn from the initial rejections so we can work on our weaknesses and get better as writers.

As unproven writers, we seek external validation to justify the time and effort we put into our chosen craft. Encouragement from those we care about, from those we respect, and from those who know little about us except for the words we write takes on a greater importance in our writerly lives.

When we don't get this early encouragement, we often give up the dream. Our lone opinion that our writing is worthwhile rarely holds up under the weight of disapproving comments and negative feedback. Or worse, no feedback at all. (Negative comments, at least, give us something to fight back against. They make us want to prove the naysayers wrong, to show that yes, we can successfully quit our day jobs, thank you very much. When we get no feedback, however, we have nothing to build on or to fight against. We're left in a void, unsure of any direction.)

But, if our desire to write is true, it will resurface again and again until we either finally take action or we die. When the time is right, we will understand our need to write. We will believe in that need, in our right to pursue our dream and in the validity of our pursuit. We will have the internal validation that we need before we can honestly seek such confirmation externally.

Only when we believe in ourselves as writers can we expect our readers, including the almighty publishers and editors of the world, to believe in us, too.

Then the rest will come.