Lessons in Self-Doubt: What My First Feedback as a Writer Taught Me

In this episode of Have a Cup of Johanny, I open up about one of the hardest lessons I learned as a new writer: how self-doubt shaped the way I received my very first feedback.

Like many new writers, I just wanted people to love me and love my project. But instead of pausing and filtering through the feedback, I took it all to heart. I changed everything. And in the process, I lost the story I wanted to tell—and almost lost my voice as a writer altogether.

Here’s what this experience taught me:

✨ Why confidence is key when receiving feedback.

✨ How to pause before reacting so feedback becomes a tool, not a takeover.

✨ Why self-doubt can derail your creative process if you don’t learn how to stand in your truth.

These lessons echo deeply in my debut novel, The Ordinary Bruja, where Marisol must also confront the voices of doubt and learn to trust herself.

📚 Preorder The Ordinary Bruja today: haveacupofjohanny.com

📧 Email me: joa@haveacupofjohanny.com

📱 TikTok: @acupofjo_hanny | @thebookbruja

📸 Instagram: @haveacupofjohanny

🎶 Intermission Music License: SES7ZN8UVCXMTFFL

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Coffee, And October Focus
• 2:24 Meet Marisol And The Ordinary Bruja
• 3:30 Naming The Enemy: Self‑Doubt
• 4:48 First Feedback And Panic Editing
• 8:20 Process, Self‑Knowledge, And Confidence
• 10:35 When Feedback Erases Your Story
• 13:20 Trashing The Draft And Starting Fresh
• 16:08 Building Confidence: Conferences And MFA
• 19:39 Boundaries: The Pause Before Edits
• 22:00 A Beta Reader Story And The Wait
• 25:12 Feeling The Hurt, Choosing With Clarity
• 28:30 Pauses As A Life Skill
• 31:00 Reviews, Practice, And Sustainable Confidence
• 34:10 Final Lessons And Listener Invitation
• 37:00 Outro And Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:12

To your point, to your breath, to the point you don't taste to the flight. So pour your cafecito.

SPEAKER_01: 0:37

Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of Have a Cup of Johnny podcast. So I debated quite a lot about what to talk about in October. I've done spooky season and supernatural stuff before. But this year I wanted to touch on something because I am pretty much inundated in the ordinary bruja right now. And my main character, Marisol, is a big part of that. Like I am just completely involved in pushing out this book, and therefore that's what my mind occupies the most is the ordinary bruja y Marisol Espinar. One of the things about Marisol Espinar, which is something that I've grappled with quite a lot before, and I still do, because I believe it's a work in progress, is self-doubt. So this month of October in the Have a Couple Johnny podcast, I want to talk about those moments of self-doubt, those key moments of self-doubt, and what I learned from them and what I did to pivot and come out of that. Y'all ready? Let's get it. All right. So when I was thinking about this theme, the very first moment that came to mind was my first feedback. My first writing feedback that I received. Let me explain. So y'all heard me talk about higher education on the last month's theme and how I decided to go to an MFA program. Before that, I went to a writer's conference just to make sure, right? And we'll talk a little bit deeper about that moment as well, because that is a moment of self-doubt, a big moment of self-doubt that I had. But before all of that, I was testing the water by being part of writers' groups. And this was while we were still in quarantine and the pandemic was in full swing. And I was trying to be part of the writing community through the social media app, and I can't think of the of the name currently, that is just fully voice. And I was part of that. And we had like a meeting, it was awesome. I had a meeting every morning with them. So I started my mornings kind of like in community with other writers. And mind you, I hadn't published anything. I think I was doing something on WattPat. So check me out. I'm not bringing those stories down because I'm very proud of them. Those were my very first attempts at storytelling. And I don't want to, you know, put them down. I want to leave them there because to me that's a badge of honor. So if you're curious about it, I'll link it on the show notes and then you can go check it out on WattPat. Completely free. So I had done that. I had done a few of that in before I started being in community with other writers, indie, indie writers, but it was a mixture of indie writers and traditional pub uh published authors as well, but it was mostly indie authors. And I was also part of Ruth that I believe it was on Discord. It was completely online, and it was a group of authors, and we all turn in things, and then you get inline feedback on your document. Let me tell you what happened. I'm so embarrassed to talk about it. I don't think I've ever talked about this before. God. So I was like, fine, I'm gonna write something, I'm gonna turn it in, you know, put my name in the hat. And I turned it in. And I remember I was so anxious about the feedback, what they would say, would they love it, would they hate it? All of that was going through my mind. It was so much pressure building up in my chest. And it's like it's a whole week of waiting. You turn it in, and at the end of the week, we meet again, and then you get to see what's on your paper or what's on the document that you turned in. And I was seeing like real life feedback happening because I kept checking it throughout the week. And you can see it. It was a Google document where you can see as it's happening, feedback, but right after it's happening, feedback. And what I started to do because I just wanted my writing to be liked so badly that as the feedback was happening, I was accepting those feedbacks and actioning it on the manuscript real time. I know I am printing right now, just so print. But you know what? You're not living unless you have this French boom. That's right. Right. But uh, but that's what happened. And it was it wasn't until and I was doing this like no shape or anything. I thought I was doing something great. I was like, I'm gonna be that writer, that author, that, you know, I listen to feedback and I action it and you know, blah, blah, blah. But really, I wasn't understanding the process, and I wasn't understanding myself at that time. Let me explain that further. So the process of the feedback, and I would have, if I if I would have been mature enough to listen and fully read and digest the instructions, then I would have known that you leave it alone and you wait until all the feedback comes back, and then you take time to digest it. That's the first point. And then the second point, I didn't know myself well enough. I think as an author and as any creative, you should know yourself well enough to know what you're trying to portray through your art. And I wasn't there yet. I knew I wanted to write, I knew I wanted to be in community with readers and storytelling, but I hadn't make it, I hadn't given myself the time to get to know me so that way I can get to know my art through knowing me. Because my art is an extension of me. And that's what was missing. And inadvertently not knowing myself all that well, then means that I lack confidence in what I was pushing out. And I didn't know that back then. It took me a while to understand that. Because when you know yourself and you accept yourself, it creates a certain kind of confidence. And it's and people may see it as this genesic wa that you don't understand, but it's like this the secret sauce, this vibe that this person has. But it truly is when it's organic and it's like this very unknown vibe that you're getting from somebody. It means that they know themselves and they've accepted all parts of themselves. And therefore, you are vibing with that very organic internal confidence that they're insuming out into the world. And it's not copy, it's just very much this is me. I accept it, take it or leave it. I'm just walking through this world fully in myself. And I wasn't there, I was not there. So, because of that, I lacked confidence. And when one lacks confidence, then self-doubt creeps in easily without you even knowing. And that's what was happening. I was doubting myself. I was like, what am I doing here? What I'm writing here is wrong. All these people are telling me to do it this way. So I should do it the way that they're telling me because they know better. You see? As opposed to if I would have understood myself, accepted myself, and then understand what I was trying to tell with this story, I would have had a more objective view of the critiques and understand what was value added when it comes to those critiques and what was not. And therefore, I would have known what to accept and what to inject. So that's what I mean by I didn't take the time, I wasn't mature enough to understand the rules, and I didn't know myself as well. And all of that came into play there. Before all of that, person that was running the group, she was like, and she didn't name any names, but I still felt very embarrassed, very cringe inside. And she was like, please, she pushed out a message to everyone. Do not go in and change your manuscript as is being open to critique and feedback. Allow the feedback to happen, then you can go in and make your changes if you choose to after you get the feedback. And I knew she was talking about me. I mean, obviously, I was the only one doing that. But again, she was very kind. She didn't say my name or anything like that. But still, there was a moment that till this day I'm embarrassed by. But I hold it as a badge of honor, as something that I went through as a newbie writer, trying to understand the craft, the academy and community with other writers, because that's important. As much as people want to say that writing is a solitary process, it is, but it also is not because there's so much more to just writing. I think drafting is a solitary process for the most part, unless you share things while you're drafting it. I don't. So for me, it's it's a solitary process because when I'm drafting, I'm just drafting. I don't share any of that because that's just kind of like vomit on the page. I may share outlines though with my husband. Once I edit the stuff, I may share certain passages. And of course, and I have beta readers and I have editors and all of that. And that's when, for me, in my process, that's when community starts coming in and I start bringing people into what I've written. But while I'm drafting it, no, it's very solitary. Saying that, I was learning those things at that point because it is so many steps to it. But the thing that was holding me back was not so much that I didn't understand that new environment that I was trying to be part of at that time. It was that I didn't know myself. That's what it was. I was still very much not open to shadow work, to understanding the cars and the traumas and the things that I had lived and how it was manifesting in my present time. I was still trying to just like patch things up or ignore it and go around it and continue to live my life as if nothing was there. I was still very much in that mindset then. And it showed in my black confidence because most of the things that would have been thrown at me at that time that would have exacerbated any of those cars that I carried then and I still carry now, I would have had like a blown up, a mini meltdown or a full-on meltdown over it. You see what I'm saying? And then that just affects the way that you connect with people, the way that you present yourself in the world, because at that point I was still very much guarded. I was still very much just uh superficial, not really making those deep connections. And I feel like that affects not just how you live, but for me, it also affects how I write. Because if I'm not being open with myself, I'm not gonna be open with my writing. I was not open with my writing. I hope I'm doing it justice in explaining it because it's like a pistachio. That's still in the shell. You know, you know how sometimes you you have the shell that's kind of like halfway crack open, and then that's how you get it, and you have to crack it open fully in order to eat it. So at that point in my life, I was like, shell half open, kind of pistachio. You know, because I was kind of seeing some things through my writing. For me, writing is this therapeutic thing that you start writing it and you're like, why am I writing it? And it makes you think. Because once again, art is an extension of the artist. So what you're creating is an extension, it's almost like a mirror of something of your life, of something you experience, something. So I was going to find myself one way or another through writing. A lo malo, a lo bueno. I was gonna do it, but I wasn't fully there yet at the beginning of my journey. And that's why I feel like I was not ready at that point. And as it is with life, when you're not ready, things just don't happen. Doors don't open up for you and all that other stuff. So as it happens when I received this feedback and I looked at it, it was a completely new story. Let me explain. This can also go into a lot of aspects of life. When you change your life to please others, you get to a point where you turn around and you look at that life and you don't recognize it because you have adjusted your life by mirroring others, not by mirroring yourself. So now back to the story I was writing and that I gave to other writers for feedback, is that I received it and it was not my story any longer. It was not the story that I set out to write. It was completely different by making the adjustments. The plot had changed, the motivation of the main character had changed to something that I could not get behind because I didn't have solid footing there. You see what I'm saying? When I create characters, I create it from a seat of truth. It's something there that I can tie myself to. And that's what allows me to write because I'm tethered to that small nugget there that is so me. And then I'm able to write. And it's like it's so easy to write from there. It's like holding on to a thread, and then I just start pulling. And that's how it feels when I write the way that I do, which is through the seed of truth. When I made all these changes based on what everyone else in that group had told me, and they're not at fault for this. They're giving me their opinion. I asked for their opinion by turning in my manuscript to them or this scene or chapter, I forgot what it was. So they're not at fault. They did what I asked them to do, which is give me their opinion on my work. I'm supposed to do my due diligence and then just see if the critique that they're giving me fits or don't fit, and then I accept or reject accordingly. But I accepted all of it because I wasn't confident in myself. I didn't know myself, therefore, I wasn't confident, therefore, I had self-doubt of myself, the story, and the meaning of it all, really. So now I'm looking at this story and it's something completely different. When you get to that point as a writer, I know for me, when I got to that point as a writer, it was very frustrating and overwhelming as well. Because now I'm thinking, how am I gonna get it back to the story that I remember? How am I gonna get it back to the story that I am able to work through? Because right now it's like it's someone else's story. I would think that this is what ghostwriting may feel like, and I'm not a ghostwriter. I don't think I could. I think I could be a ghostwriter because I need that seed of truth in order to write. So I'm looking at this and I'm overwhelmed. I am completely frustrated and mad at myself. So, of course, that small nugget of self-doubt that I started feeling, it's growing now. And that's how it is with self-doubt. It's a snowball effect because I was already tingling with it at the beginning of it. As people were giving me critique, I was taking those critiques on as me being inadequate. And then it started growing then. And now I'm looking at the things that I accepted and implemented, and now it's growing even more because all of these things were things that I did to myself. No one else did it for me. I did it to myself, and understanding that and accepting that now makes me feel even more inadequate, and self-doubt has grown into this gigantic snowball, per se, if I am to use that same analogy. That's how pervasive it is. When I realized the pickle I had put myself in, no one helped me into this pickle. I did it single-handedly. I trashed that manuscript. And I don't know if y'all know this. I guess I'm not the only one because I saw this from another writer on YouTube. And that is that beginner writers have a lot of unfinished manuscripts. A lot. It takes us like one manuscript to finish to kind of like give us the motivation to continue to finish it. Because the hardest part is to finish, at least for me. That's my opinion. The hardest part is to finish. It's not to start because I have so many manuscripts that I started, let go, that I thought I will finish, let go. This is one of them. So when this happened, I was so overwhelmed, so frustrated. And I knew that I would be uncapable of undoing all of that. But not just that, that it will take even much more effort to undo all of this in order to get the manuscript back to where I started it off with, then it would be for me to just start fresh. So that's exactly what I did. I started fresh. That I needed confidence. I needed confidence in my writing. And also I needed to not let that happen again. So the next time I sought out feedback, I implemented something new because I knew from inspecting this moment that I allowed my emotions to really get out of hand. And it is a mixture of embarrassment, of not wanting to let people down, of wanting to be loved, wanting my creations, things that I create to be loved, not wanting to be rejected, which is a a known scar of mine. And all of that manifested into this moment of me bending my story to a point where it became unrecognizable. So I took away those two things that I needed to gain confidence in my writing, and that from that point forward, I needed to stop allowing people to turn my story into something that is not me. And I could control all of that. I figured I can control the confidence thing, the lack of confidence in writing by investing in myself through a writer's conference that we're gonna discuss in depth later on in another episode, where I figured I got pushed back quite a lot, and I have some lessons from that as well. And I figure that an MFA in creative writing will help me gain the confidence that I needed because it will give me some sort of validation that an external source said that I was good enough to earn a degree in this subject, which was creative writing. And I knew that those two things will give me confidence, so that's how I took care of that. But how I was going to stop people from turning my story into something that I couldn't recognize later on, especially when, as a writer, like I said, it's not necessarily solitary. The drafting for me is solitary, but everything else is a team effort. I seek out external people for alpha reads, beta reads, editing, developmental line, copy editing, proofread. So I do seek out external sources so that way they can help my story become better, polished, right? Easier to read, more digestible, a better experience for the reader. So I needed to put some boundaries within myself and my processes that could help me achieve that. And one of those things that I implemented was a pause between when I receive feedback and when I look at the feedback. And that was detrimental. And to me, it was hard to abide by it, but I did it because I reminded myself of this moment. And every time I want to open up a feedback email or feedback letter from anybody, I remind myself of this moment. And then that keeps me in line. That keeps me from opening up, you know, that thing way too soon. And then it helps to calm my nerves and remind myself, just take a deep breath, Joa. Wait until you're in the right space to take this feedback. So that way you're able to digest it properly. And a funny thing happened, and this was recent, with one of the beta readers for The Ordinary Bruha. Bless her heart, she sent me her feedback, and I should have done better. I should have said receipt, right? But she sent me her feedback, and this is a novel that I've been pouring a lot into. It is my first full novel in the adult age group. The last one was Mrs. Franchise Evil Ring, but that was for children. So this is technically my first adult debut novel. So I'm very excited. I got a lot of nerves over it. It's just like a lot of feelings involved with this novel. And I remember getting this feedback from the beta reader, and my first instinct was to like, ah, open it, digest it, you know, and start implementing the edits. But I was like, no, I pulled back, saw that the feedback was there, and I gave myself a week to calm myself before I even look at it. Usually when I'm in that pause, I do some scheduling, marketing posts, some schedule blogs and things of that nature. So I usually do marketing within the pauses. And that's how I deal with those pauses and keep myself busy on adjacent things. And the funny thing that happened was that the beta reader contacts me and she's like, Hey, you never told me. Did you get it? I was having problems with my email and stuff like that. Did you get it? And I felt like crap because I'm like, I'm so intent on making sure that I don't do that same thing that I did many years ago, that I forgot to tell this beta reader that I had received her feedback. And I apologized. I was like, yes, I'm so sorry. I was busy. Obviously, I didn't explain this whole traumatic thing that happened to me and the lesson that I learned from it because it would have been too much. Too much for a person that doesn't know me like that. So I was like, yes, I just got too busy, but I received your edits. Thank you so much. And she was like, Yeah, just let me not be having any questions. I was like, okay, cool. Oh, God, but it was so embarrassing. So once I had my week waiting period, then that's when I opened her feedback and I was able to go through it. Another thing that I implemented in order to ensure that I don't do this again, was that I give myself another pause to digest the feedback. And this is why I do that, because emotions are involved. You heard me tell you that I write from a seed of truth. Every single one of my pieces, whether they're published or not published, carries something of me in them. That's the thread of truth that I hold on to that keeps me writing. And it makes it easy for me to write these fictional stories because they have kind of like that basis, that one brick that is just all about me, and everything else is just a fake brick that I put on top of it. But because that brick is there, that's what makes it me. That's what helps me to write everything else in it. And because of that, whenever somebody says something that is not so positive, and I'm not saying that it's mean because no one has given me like mean criticism. Well, I take that back somehow, and I've dealt with that. But for the most part, no one has given me mean criticism. It's just criticism that because it's not positive, it's not I love this or I love that, then it hurts my feelings. And that's the bottom line that comes to my, you know, like I can't sugarcoat that any, you know, any other way. It hurts my feelings. So I have to protect my feelings in some sort of way so that way I can continue writing. Because once again, to write is to read write. And you can only rewrite from acknowledging that something is wrong and something needs to be rewritten or fixed or taken away from the novel or expanded upon. Writing requires some sort of hurt feelings in there. I mean, there's no other way around it. You have to cry a little bit. I know I do. So I give myself that pause. And it's usually like a day. And I mole over it. And I'm I'm the type of person that when I read something, when I have like a conversation with with a person, or where when I have those tough conversations with people, it stays with me. Those conversations, those words, they bounce in my head like 24-7. I'm mulling over that. I'm thinking about what I said, how I may have looked to the other person when I said it, how I could have said it better. And if there's any reactions involved from me or the other person or people, that will go through my head a lot. And it's the same thing with these feedback. They stay in my head. I think about it quite a lot. So after I read it, I take that additional pause of a day or two to think it through. And if my day job is keeping me pretty busy, that pause is even longer. And as I shift my priority to my day job, in the back of my head, I'm also thinking about that feedback. And then once my day job focus is stable and I can put like more brain power into the feedback, then that's when like the plump starts sticking on that pause. So that way I can really roll it over. And usually this helps me to not make those irrational decisions on my manuscript like I did before, to where I completely changed everything to something that was not recognized. This is crucial for me. This pause in particular, because it just keeps me from getting too intense with it. Because part of me just wants to change it all and be done with it and to have this person, and it's very irrational, right? This thought. And I acknowledge that. But this is, I'm opening up myself to y'all. This is how it goes. Or they're that they're implying or insinuating or whatnot. Once again, none of this is the beta reader's fault or the editor's fault or anything like that. Like I am asking for this feedback. How I'm taking it, that's that's how I'm controlling this thing. So that way I can make this book the best thing that I can with all the shit that I have on. So that's what I do right there in particular. And I tell you what, that has paid dividends 10 times over when it comes to me receiving feedback and actually or rejecting some feedback because that pause just clears my head and clears me from overwhelming emotions that could potentially hinder me from making the best choices for that manuscript. That I don't know if you can tweak this into something that you got going on in your life, but pauses in whatever situation you may find yourself are crucial to tamper emotions and to be able to seek dearly. And if you take anything out of this chat that we're having, take that. Don't ever feel shy about breaking away from something that is overwhelming until you can regain your focus and then come back to it. I'm not saying separate yourself from it and definitely run away from it because eventually you're gonna have to face this, right? I can't run away from my beta readers. Eventually, I want to publish the story. I want to implement these changes. But I know for me, I need that extra day pause once I digest that so that way I can be more clear-headed and implement these things. So just think about in ways that sometimes emotions overwhelm you in a way that you cannot see clearly or you don't have a clear way forward and implement those pauses, you know, as they help you as you see fit. I'm telling you, for me, it has eight dividends. But those were the things that I implemented, right? I gained confidence through the MFA and through continuous writing as well. That's where like me starting and finishing manuscripts also added to that confidence that I now have. And the more books that I complete, the more books that I publish, the more that my confidence will grow. Reviews are also very validating, and that builds my confidence as well as an author, because it's it's readers telling me that, you know, this book is working for them. Reviews also work on the other hand as feedback, as criticism that I can use to make another manuscript better, or that same manuscript if I'm receiving that feedback before I publish it. You see what I'm saying? So, all in all, reviews and MFA and continue to write and publish books is adding to my confidence as a writer. But the baseline for my confidence, I gained through an MFA. That doesn't mean you have to do an MFA or you have to do the equivalent of that in whatever it is that you're trying to gain confidence in. It could be that you do YouTube videos, you know, you practice hands-on practice, you get some sort of certification on it if you have the means to do it. But validating that you have mastered something to a certain extent for me, I think is so important. It was so important in building my confidence as a writer. How you do it, it really depends on the resources that you have, your lifestyle. But those pauses, when it comes to accepting or rejecting critique, so that way I can be more objective and less reactional and less sentimental about the whole thing, those right there were detrimental. Because once again, this manuscript is not gonna get good unless I open myself to feedback. And also I know how to implement those feedbacks, those routines that I've received. Because they're only good if I know how to implement it, or if I know which one to implement and which one to leave on the table and not action. You see, so that was a big learning moment for me, and all because I had self-doubt. And I go back to what I said at the beginning, you know, self-doubt was this seed that grew because I lacked confidence in myself and in my writing. You see, so gaining confidence in myself and in my writing pushed me then to implement the things that I needed to implement in order to continue on with my dream, being a published author and connecting with readers through storytelling. So I hope that you learned something from this. And if you have, leave me a comment, let me know, or let me know if you're implementing something like this, or if you plan on implementing something similar in your life so that way you can kind of like TKO that self-doubt that is hanging on your nagging choking. Let me know. I'll talk to y'all later. Bye. Oh, we could we could fly.

SPEAKER_00: 37:53

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