By Sabyasachi Roy
Self-doubt doesn’t wait for failure. You don’t have to flop publicly or get rejected. Doubt shows up before all that, like it already read your draft and hated it.
Some days it whispers. Other days it screeches:
Who told you, you could write?
Why does this matter?
Who’s going to care?
And the worst—This has already been said. Better.
You can swat at it, argue, write anyway. But doubt doesn’t want you to quit. It wants you to hesitate. Flinch. Break your flow. That pause—“maybe not”—is all it needs.
Sometimes it wears fake productivity: rearranging your desk, googling synonyms, staring at analytics like tarot cards. It looks like work but isn’t.
Doubt isn’t new or clever, just persistent. You don’t outgrow it—you get faster at spotting its costume. A teacher’s voice, an old review, that stranger who said your poem felt “unfinished” years ago.
Some writers name their doubt—Barbara with the bad haircut, or an expired librarian scolding from the corner. Make it ridiculous if you must. It helps. Because doubt loves dressing up as reason: Don’t send that yet, wait till it’s cleaner. Two months pass. Doesn’t feel true enough. Delete. This is derivative. Don’t submit. What if someone you know reads it? Close the file. Then: See? You’re not a real writer. Loop complete.
Here’s the thing: doubt means you care. You’re close to something raw, maybe even honest. That’s why it screams. It’s guarding the edge of something worth writing.
Still, doubt sucks. It slows you down, makes you reread the same draft fourteen times hoping it magically becomes someone else’s. It never does. Even when you like a piece, doubt crawls back: Yeah, but is it good good?
That’s the trap. You think doubt keeps your ego in check, but it’s just ambition in disguise, trying to make you shrink.
You don’t fix doubt by becoming a “better” writer. You just write with it, like background noise—the fridge hum you stop noticing. Writing through doubt becomes muscle memory. Not a dance, more like a limp you learn to walk with.
A friend, brilliant writer, assumes everything she drafts is garbage. That way, if something good sneaks through, it’s a surprise. It’s not self-hate—it’s strategy. Low expectations, high output.
Doubt gets loudest when you’re trying something new: a different voice, form, subject. Your gut screams stop. But nobody knows what they’re doing mid-draft. That’s why it’s a draft.
Annoyingly, some of your best work comes when you hate what you’re writing. You finish, shrug, move on—then someone reads it and cries, or publishes it, and you think they emailed the wrong person. You’re rarely the best judge of your own work. Doubt has bad taste. It wants you safe and forgettable. That’s not why you write.
So what do you do? You write anyway. Even if the voice says you suck. Even if the first line is terrible. You let it be ugly. One more line, then another. Yes, you are in doubt, but you are still writing, isn’t it?
Yes, doubt can creep into identity: You’re bad. You used to write. Maybe you’re not cut out for this. That’s not truth—that’s doubt stealing your voice. It sounds like you because it uses your words. But it’s a lie.
Doubt thrives on silence—days of no writing, projects abandoned, ideas left to rot. It convinces you everyone else is confident, when they’re not. They just don’t post the ugly parts: the false starts, broken endings, notebooks of trash drafts.
Writers have to be a little delusional—to believe in something that doesn’t exist yet. That belief doesn’t erase doubt. It just refuses to move aside for it.
Even after awards or viral posts, doubt shifts shape: Was that a fluke? Was that my peak? It always finds new ways to poke the part of you that wants this too much.
The fix? Pretend you’re writing just for you. Forget the audience, forget your name. Build something in the dark no one asked for. If someone stumbles into it later and goes, oh—that’s enough.
Don’t wait for confidence. Allow doubt to sit on your shoulder. Let it. Just don’t let it drive.
You can doubt yourself and still write something true.
You can feel like a fraud and still finish the story.
You can hate your draft and still send it out.
And maybe that’s exactly what the voice is afraid of.
Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.
