-Cat

-Anthony

That is a great point. But I think the way to overcome that goes back to what I said originally, and that’s to lead an interesting life and get some great experiences under your belt. If you live a life you’re not proud of and never try anything outside of your comfort zone, do you really think you deserve confidence to begin with? Confidence is earned, and it takes a lot of effort to build a solid foundation. But transcending narcissism… still not entirely sure on that one.

And I hope people would feel inspired after this post. I didn’t want to shut them down as writers — I just wanted to point them towards the path of creating better content in their own voice!

I think the most difficult part is balancing the need to transcend narcissism with the need for greater confidence as a writer.

Lots of people would love to start a blog, but think to themselves, “What have I got to add that’s interesting? Nothing.”

There’s a low barrier to entry for ego-blogging.

I see your advice as being most helpful to people who’ve already gotten over the huge confidence barriers to sharing their work with others.

There are tons of people still on the other side of the fence – again, mostly young people and women in my experience.

However, I completely agree with you that a person will NEVER succeed as a writer unless they get over the issues you’ve outlined here.

Is it possible for beginners to read something like “Why your blog will fail” and feel inspired rather than dejected?

-Susan

These are excellent questions, and I’m not sure I have a good answer for either of them. You’re asking how to learn empathy and not copy other writers. The first is something that I think just develops with age. You realize you’re not in some movie about yourself where everyone else is a supporting role. I honestly wish I could say I knew the exact steps to getting over narcissism and egocentrism, but I don’t. The fact is that not everyone outgrows this — I know I continue to struggle with it. Everyone is innately selfish, so it can be extremely difficult, if not altogether impossible, to completely shed your egocentrism.

The challenge then is not to stop being selfish, but rather to find a style of communication that your audience really responds to, and ensure that your content is great. I wrote about this here on ways to find out if they’re responding the way you want them to. I’m no expert, but watching these few metrics has worked well for me.

As far as avoiding copying other writers… well, that’s another difficult one. I think the main problem isn’t that their style is being copied, but rather that they’re speaking as though they have the same experience and knowledge as the author. This is obviously bad to do because it’s superficial and there’s no foundation from which they speak. So I guess the best thing to do if you’re a writer and don’t want to copy people is to live an interesting life, then write about what you know. I think it really is as simple as that. I can’t talk about certain aspects of marketing or entrepreneurship in the way that Seth Godin does because I don’t have his experiences or wisdom yet. But I can make it clear when I’m wondering about something theoretically, or speaking from personal experience.

I love this post and have shared it with all the aspiring writers that I know.

What I’ve noticed, though, is that a lot of young wannabe writers – ESPECIALLY women – have already thought of a billion reasons why they’ll fail and are paralyzed because of them.

What are some techniques to help young people recognize, with humility, that they’re starting out as selfish copycats and, Step 2, then transcend that?

-Susan

Hunter Thompson used to type out F. Scott Fitzgerald word for word verbatim (unpublished, obviously). Early Seth Godin oddly resembles the work of Tom Peters, prior to their collaboration. While I agree that it is important for influential bloggers to find their own voice, there is always going to be a lag period until they do.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with your points. But, something to consider is that there will also always be a (small and unfortunate) market for posers and impersonators that people like you and I will see through. The thing is, the writers that will make a difference are the one’s that find their unique voice and attack a new genre.