Personal Update (Patreon)

 Hello friends, patrons and public. 

Here's a well needed update from yours truly: Brittany.

You've not heard from me in awhile; a long while. I acknowledge that and would like to take some accountability for why that is.

It boils down into one category: impostor syndrome. 

There are a few types of this if you look it up. Basically the overview of it is that psychologically some people sometimes (or all the time) feel incompetent in what they're doing; they feel like an impostor who will be exposed for a fraud.

I have a couple different types of this. Some I have all the time while others only surface every so often.

Let me explain my personal battles:

I'm a perfectionist and have what some psychologists call a 'natural genius' sect of this impostor syndrome. What this means is that I like to have everything "perfect" or "just so" as well as the experience that I have the ability to do things "naturally" and "easy". This translates to mean that if things aren't going well on the first try or if my final product isn't what in my eyes is "close to perfect" I will get discouraged from presenting my efforts or will give up partway through something because things aren't "working out". This has been a battle for me growing up but more recently has really come back in full force over the past couple of years. It's been a bit of a struggle and one that I didn't even realize the root cause of until recently.

What happened in the context of my writing is as follows:

I was excited and happily working on my current project 'Daughter of Death' for a long while and releasing chapters here to Patreon. And then the direction of the story changed as I went along and so when I got to one point of the story -specifically the part where you the audience left off- and I didn't have a solid transition into the 'Snow White vs The Queen' part of the story that everyone knows where The Queen tries to kill Snow White with three different attempts on the girl's life, I stopped writing. It was a combination of writer's block and that impostor syndrome. When I would easily come up with a little idea on where to go next, my brain would shut it down as not being 'good enough'; not matching up to the rest of the story's stronger narrative to this point. This happened over and over until I finally just stopped working on trying to advance the story altogether thinking that I'd come back to it when 'life wasn't so busy' but not realizing that it was subconsciously me beating myself up over not having any good ideas and feeling bad for not writing and going in that vicious circle of self-doubt and self-loathing and thus abandoning the work because I wasn't feeling good about the project not because I was 'too busy' for it or unmotivated to work on it.

More recently I sat down with the story again and just wrote out most of a chapter without worrying whether it fit or not. I just wanted to get writing. Honestly it was a struggle to finish because in the back of my mind I kept thinking 'ugh I hate this. Where is this even going? Will this fit with where the story is going?' You know what, maybe it doesn't. Maybe my brain is right that it could use more work. But, I hope you don't mind that I'm going to post it anyway later on today or tomorrow. Because for me I think my first step in getting over all this is to face outside judgement. I need to learn to take whatever criticism comes from outside forces. And I need to have more confidence in myself and my abilities too. I've come this far, haven't I?

And so to further this: with your permission, patrons and friends, I'd like to do something new on this platform: I would like to start up a bi-weekly one-shot story. Once every two weeks I will publish a one-off story for your enjoyment based on prompts and ideas that you send in or that I choose randomly. It think this will help get me back into writing without the feelings of pressure I put on myself that come with the bigger projects; it will be a hopefully fun and unique experience for every new publication piece!

I will still be working on 'Daughter of Death'. Fear not!

Please provide your feedback below on any of the above! :)

Thanks so much for your support everyone and I appreciate every single person who has come across my work whether before or in the future I hope you can find some enjoyment in what I do!

Love,

Britt xoxo