It takes a lot of guts to write about writing confidence. In my case, it also took a lot of pacing, second-guessing and rewriting. Confidence, in writing and anything else, is an elusive thing that comes mostly from trial and error, perceptible growth, positive feedback and overcaffeination. It’s hard to fake self-assuredness, unless you feel very secure in your ability to lie about how secure you feel. If you want to write professionally, you need to be fully confident that you have the skills to do so.

How To Know You’re Not a Confident Writer

Consider these telltale signs that you’re not confident in your writing:

1. You Don’t Use Your Time Efficiently

When I first started writing SEO articles, I was earning about 62 cents an hour. This was not because I was grossly underpaid, but because I would spend five hours working on a 200-word article. I was so nervous about making mistakes that I spent way too much time reading and rewriting my work. After getting a few more articles under my belt, I began to write faster and more efficiently; that helped me to up my production and start making a living wage. Time is money for freelance writers, so if your writing confidence is low and you spend too much time doubting your work, you’re going to feel it in your wallet.

2. Your Content Is Repetitive

Redundancy is one of the many symptoms of writing sans conviction. When you type out a clear sentence, you shouldn’t need to repeat that information. However, if you’re always questioning the clarity of your writing, you’ll find yourself following up a perfectly fine phrase with another version of the same thing, and all that does is weaken the entire paragraph. It’s the equivalent of telling a good joke and then nervously laughing before your audience has a chance to respond. If you can trust that you got it right the first time, you’ll avoid turning clever phrases into unfunny jokes.

3. Your Writing Opportunities Are Limited

Some people get paid to write because they are experts in a specific field. It’s a little different when your expertise is writing, as you’ll almost certainly have to tackle subjects that are outside your areas of interest. That’s why writers need to trust their wordplay abilities to make up for the knowledge they might be missing. I’ve written scores of blogs about getting out of debt, and if any of my credit card providers knew that, they’d all laugh until they couldn’t breathe. However, I feel confident that those creditors wouldn’t take issue with the actual content of my financial articles; they’d just wonder why I’m so bad at following my own advice.

Without sufficient writing confidence, it’s very hard to make a living as a writer. That’s why it’s important to work hard and learn to trust the quality of your content. Got a story about your own confidence building? Share it in the comments!