Writing Ambition: Stop Asking Permission and Start Writing
Many writers struggle with self-doubt and creative timidity, holding themselves back from ambitious projects they’re actually capable of completing. In this blog post, I share the one piece of writing advice I wish someone had given my younger self – and explore why writing ambition isn’t about ego, but about removing the mental barriers that keep you from doing your best work.
If I could go back and give my fifteen-year-old self one piece of advice about writing, it wouldn’t be about point of view or plot structure or finding your voice. It would be this: be ambitious. Not ambitious about winning prizes or getting famous. Ambitious about what you believe you can write.
I spent years approaching writing like I wasn’t qualified to do so. How could I presume to create characters as complex as those in the novels I admired? How could I hope to generate the kind of story that might hold a reader’s attention? I’d sit down to write with a kind of pre-emptive diffidence, already conceding that real imagination, real facility with narrative, belonged to other people – the naturally talented, the real writers.
I sometimes told myself that my diffidence was just a matter of natural humility. It was actually just a ceiling I’d built for myself.
In recent years, I’ve discovered two things that have completely rewritten my understanding of what I’m capable of.
First, I can write much more, much more quickly than I ever believed possible. Not by working myself into exhaustion or sacrificing quality, but simply by removing the mental barriers that told me writing had to be slow, laborious, extracted one painful sentence at a time.
Second, and perhaps more important: I can write anything. I can create characters I didn’t believe I had the imagination to craft on the page. I can generate story on a level I had simply denied it was possible to generate. Not because I suddenly became more talented, but because I stopped telling myself I couldn’t – and also because in the environment of television writing, stories are simply the currency of every transaction. If you can’t pull a couple of tales out of your pocket at a moment’s notice, you didn’t stand a chance.
This isn’t positive thinking. I’m not suggesting that wanting something badly enough makes it happen, or that every writer can write everything equally well.
What I am saying is this: the targets that seem extravagant – writing in a genre you’ve never assayed, creating a character completely unlike anyone in your experience, attempting a structure you’ve never seen done successfully – those targets aren’t really extravagant at all. They’re just unfamiliar. And we mistake the unfamiliar for the impossible.
The writer who begins confidently, who’s happy to take on any project without first asking permission from some imagined authority, develops faster. They create a distinct voice more rapidly. They’re writing striking and original stories sooner. Not because confidence is magic, but because they’re actually doing the work instead of spending years wondering whether they’re allowed to.
When I look at young writers now, I see them making the same mistake I made: mistaking caution for realism. They’ll say, “I’m not good at dialogue” or “I can’t write action scenes” or “My imagination doesn’t work that way,” and they’ll mean it as a simple statement of fact. But it’s not fact. It’s just a decision to not try.
The diffident writer asks: How can I impose on the universe? “Do I dare to eat a peach?” J. Alfred Prufrock asked. How can I hope to match even the least talented writers writing?
The ambitious writer asks: What do I want to write next?
One of these writers is still seeking permission. The other is already working.
If only someone had told me, when I was eighteen, or fifteen, or twelve, that the secret was a simple one: be ambitious. Believe yourself capable of learning anything. Not because you’re special, but because that’s how writing works. You learn by doing the thing you don’t yet know how to do.
So I’m telling you now.
Don’t stifle yourself by being shy about declaring creative targets that might seem extravagant. Set them anyway. Chase them. You’ll find they weren’t extravagant at all – they were just the next thing you were always capable of writing.
Whether you’re fifteen or seventy five, the only thing standing between you and the work you dream of creating is the decision to stop asking for permission and start.
Further reading to inspire your writing ambition:
10 ways to boost your writing confidence
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