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I’ve stated before that writing Do I Need to Use a Dragon? was a challenge in a variety of ways.  One of them was my confidence.  I questioned if I had any right to release a book on writing when I’m an indie author who barely sells anything.  That plagued me throughout the process.  So, did my confidence grow by writing and publishing this book?

I’d love to say yes, but I can’t.  Don’t think I can give a no either.  Part of me still feels like I’m a fool for voicing my opinion.  That part will always be there.  Can’t take it back though, so I have to accept that I wrote and published the book.  This self-analysis is going so well.

At the very least, I have a better understanding of my own viewpoint when it comes to writing and being an author.  Do I Need to Use a Dragon? helped me pinpoint my strategies and aspects of my style.  This does give me a little confidence when outlining and planning stories.  Not sure it made a dent in how I’m feeling when I actually write things.  I routinely have imposter syndrome whenever I finish a section of a Tales of the Slumberlord volume.  That doesn’t sound very confident.

This is a really difficult question to answer now that I think about it.  Confidence isn’t something that you gain and keep forever.  It rises and falls depending on your progress, mood, and life.  I actually started working on Do I Need to Use a Dragon? back in 2019 in terms of planning.  The pandemic is what gave me the time to write the book along with the final volumes of War of Nytefall.  That amount of free time made me feel like I did in the old days even with the doubt about the overall project.  This could mean that I gained confidence during the writing stage.  It didn’t really carry over to the editing part, especially when it took so long to publish.  Plenty of times I thought about scrapping the whole thing even after I was done.  Again, we aren’t seeing a ton of confidence in my thoughts and actions here.

A better question might be if I’m happy with the finished book.  That would be a yes because I put a lot of myself into it.  The advice and opinions I gave are mine, so I have to own up to them.  This doesn’t always translate to confidence, but I accept what I said and don’t make excuses.  Might make clarifications at times since I don’t always get my points across to every person.  Still, I’m happy with how the book came out and wouldn’t change anything.  In fact, editing was scary because I kept worrying that I would rewrite the entire thing and trap myself in an endless loop.

True confidence in myself will come and go over time.  It might depend on how people react to this book too.  Honestly, I may have more emotional investment in Do I Need to Use a Dragon? than any of my fiction books.  I’ve stated that it makes me feel a little exposed and vulnerable.  It shouldn’t surprise anyone to see that my confidence will be affected by responses.  Not sure if I should say that out loud.