Compliments Don't Create Confidence

I'm going to call him Ed (even though he doesn't deserve to have his identity protected). Ed was a colleague, maybe a year or two younger than me. We were both still young, mid to late twenties (yes, at my current age, that is still young), and we had to work closely together.

He was good-looking, charismatic, and a complete and total bullshitter, which made me cringe all day long.

Nothing ever made him hesitate for more than a second. It didn't matter what the question was; he had an answer. No matter the topic, he could hop into any conversation, and he always sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

He had one thing going for him. And honestly, it was the only thing.

Confidence.

Not only did he know that secret about himself, but he also bragged about it to me. Tried to coach me in it. (Didn't work. I'm only confident about what I know I know.😅)

I thought about Ed recently during a craft discussion in our Writers Reading Book Club. Someone mentioned something that triggered the memory, and we joked that maybe all we needed to become successful authors is to sound aggressively confident.

Ed loved the room. He loved the nods, the easy smiles, the instant rush of agreement. He loved the win of knowing he had conned them. But his confidence wasn't built on knowledge or experience. It was simply a performance. Improv. And as long as people bought into the act, he got the kudos he craved. It validated him.

If we're being honest, we all want validation. We want to know our work matters, that someone connects with our words, that the hours we've spent forging have shaped something that will hold. A little encouragement is a lifeline when you're deep in a flailing draft.

But validation and confidence aren't the same thing.

Validation is a sugar rush. It tells us someone likes what we've done. But like that sometimes necessary dopamine hit, it's fleeting and can cause a crash. Because when our confidence depends entirely on hearing that we're good, criticism feels like proof that we're failing. And that’s when Imposter Syndrome sprawls on your desk and licks its claws.

Real confidence doesn't come from a round of applause. It comes from the anvil.

It comes from accepting and learning how to digest constructive criticism. It's understanding why a scene works, and learning why another one is broken, and trusting your evolving ability to figure out the fix.

Ed walked into a room and convinced people he had all the answers because he was never challenged by someone wielding a red pen. We don't need to pretend we have it all figured out. We just need to be willing to listen and to admit we don't have all of the answers all of the time.

And speaking of... My filler word used to be "just." I am confident that I never have more "justs" than I intentionally place in my prose. Why? Because once I discovered it, I paid attention to it, deliberately deleting it as I would type it, until recognition became automatic. That's growth. No one is going to validate me for not using a filler word, although they may have criticized me for using one.

Compliments are lovely, but they don't create confidence. Confidence is crafted. And you're an artisan.

Forge ahead, wordsmith.

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