Having the courage to share your writing

I used to be really insecure about sharing what I wrote with others. I’ve wanted to be an author for as long as I can remember but I was so anxious about other people’s thoughts on my work that the sheer thought of someone criticizing it was enough to stop me altogether.


It was scary for me because I put my heart into everything I wrote and I knew it would suck if someone didn’t like something. But there’s a difference between someone not liking your writing and someone criticizing it - sure, both can be discouraging but would any author be where they are now if they didn’t listen to the advice they were given? Would JK Rowling be as popular as she is if Harry Potter hadn’t have been rejected dozens of times?


That was what encouraged me to put my writing online, I started on Wattpad, a social media platform where authors upload their work for others to read and see. There’s other sites too - Quotev and Tumblr are also good sharing platforms. The thing is that everyone else on there has been in the same boat, and they understand how it feels to be anxious about what others think, and because of this they’re never rude about it. They only give their honest but polite opinions


I got quite a lot of advice offered on my writing - it definitely hurt my pride to accept it but it helped, it helped a lot. I was offered criticism on how I introduced characters and how I used way too many adjectives, and because of that I (hopefully!) have improved and no longer do it.


Another good things about these sites is that they cater to all genres of writing. Wattpad for example has categories for everything from romance to action to fan fiction, so whatever you write, there’s always an audience.


I found publishing my writing online to be extremely helpful because I was barely a teenager at the time and obviously not ready for the big publishing companies, so the advice of other authors and readers offers the improvement without having to do that.


The more encouragement and reads I got, the more inspired I was to write - and the more I wrote, the more confident I became. I don’t question the quality of my writing anymore; I know I’m no Shakespeare but I don’t worry the way I did.


I’ve published my writing on a lot of sites now, including Quotev, Wattpad and Tumblr, and obviously Teenagers with Experience. In fact, if I hadn’t started sharing my writing I probably would never had got the confidence in my ability and wouldn’t be writing here today.


My advice is that you should take the leap, because you never know what will come from it.