The Stories Writers Tell Themselves
Aug 13, 2026 · 4 min · 4 segments
**Episode 1- The Stories We Tell Themselves** Writers spend a lot of time making up stories and not all of them end up in our books. *The Stories Writers Tell Themselves* is a free limited audio…
Katherine ColletteHostOver the years, both writing my own books and working with other writers, I've noticed something interesting.
Most advice for writers focuses on craft, like how to structure a story, or how to build tension, how to write better sentences, which is important because craft is important.
But if you spend any real time writing or talking to other writers, you start to notice that many of the difficulties that writers face aren't really craft problems, they're thinking problems.
They're the stories that writers start to tell themselves about their work, stories like, "Maybe I'm not actually good enough to do this," or, "Everyone else seems to be doing better than me," or, "If this book does not get published, I will have wasted so much time." These thoughts have a way of sounding incredibly convincing.
They feel plausible and like you're being realistic, and so you start to believe them.
Once you believe these stories, however, they begin to shape what you do next, and they shape the risks that you're willing to take on the page.
They impact whether you write the true thing or the honest thing that occurs to you, or the version that feels safer, whether you follow the strange or uncomfortable idea that appears while you're writing, or steer the story towards something you think people will like more, something that presents you in a better light, perhaps.
You might find yourself trying to produce something that will sell in large quantities, something very similar to the book you wrote last time, or something completely different because you think that's what the market wants.
Wanting your work to be good is a perfectly reasonable goal, but it's a difficult place to start writing from.
It's surprisingly easy to become paralyzed when you sit down already trying to make work impressive or successful or important.
The trouble is that once you start telling yourself, "This book has to be like this.
Instead, you're letting an imagined audience guide you, your editor perhaps, or future readers, or someone from high school, and the process quickly becomes more complicated.
Over time, I've realized that the difficult part of writing is rarely the writing itself.
What complicates things are the stories writers start telling themselves about their work, what it means when things go well, and what it means when they don't.
Over the years, both writing my own books and working with other writers, I've noticed something interesting.
Most advice for writers focuses on craft, like how to structure a story, or how to build tension, how to write better sentences, which is important because craft is important.
But if you spend any real time writing or talking to other writers, you start to notice that many of the difficulties that writers face aren't really craft problems, they're thinking problems.
They're the stories that writers start to tell themselves about their work, stories like, "Maybe I'm not actually good enough to do this," or, "Everyone else seems to be doing better than me," or, "If this book does not get published, I will have wasted so much time." These thoughts have a way of sounding incredibly convincing.
They feel plausible and like you're being realistic, and so you start to believe them.
Once you believe these stories, however, they begin to shape what you do next, and they shape the risks that you're willing to take on the page.
They impact whether you write the true thing or the honest thing that occurs to you, or the version that feels safer, whether you follow the strange or uncomfortable idea that appears while you're writing, or steer the story towards something you think people will like more, something that presents you in a better light, perhaps.
You might find yourself trying to produce something that will sell in large quantities, something very similar to the book you wrote last time, or something completely different because you think that's what the market wants.
Wanting your work to be good is a perfectly reasonable goal, but it's a difficult place to start writing from.
It's surprisingly easy to become paralyzed when you sit down already trying to make work impressive or successful or important.
The trouble is that once you start telling yourself, "This book has to be like this.
Instead, you're letting an imagined audience guide you, your editor perhaps, or future readers, or someone from high school, and the process quickly becomes more complicated.
Over time, I've realized that the difficult part of writing is rarely the writing itself.
What complicates things are the stories writers start telling themselves about their work, what it means when things go well, and what it means when they don't.
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