Agent in Your Pocket: You Don’t Need to Be Confident But You Do Need to Be Clear

We’ve all heard it a million times: Be confident in your work. Believe in your book. Sell your story with confidence.

And every time I hear that advice, I think about how deeply unhelpful it is to everyone. So let me be the first to say, respectfully, no.

Confidence is wonderful when it exists and grows from a genuine belief in yourself. But so often, confidence isn’t the thing that’s going to move your career forward. Clarity is. Here’s what I mean.

Every author I know believes that the authors they watch on panels and listen to in interviews are wildly sure of themselves. They imagine these writers hit “send” with steady hands. That their confidence in their careers starts the same day they first called themselves author. But if you ever spend any real time with authors at any stage in the career, you learn something very quickly. Very few authors feel confident in their work.

It’s often a side effect that shows up later—after landing the agent, after getting the book deal, after doing the first (or fifth) book tour. And sometimes, it doesn’t show up at all. What publishing and readers gravitate toward is whether or not an author can answer a seemingly simple question:

Can you explain what you’ve written?

I recently attended a writing conference and listened to a panel of authors who have all had decent levels of success in their respective spaces—literary fiction, journalism, an essayist, and a wellness writer. And they all said basically the same thing: they still aren’t sure of themselves, but they are sure of their art.

That distinction is so incredibly important, especially if you’re pursuing a career in traditional publishing.

[Agent in Your Pocket: Stop Trying to Deserve the Yes.]

The core problem most writers have with confidence is they can’t talk about their books. Think back to the very first time someone asked you to tell them what your book was about. Did it feel impossible, even though you’d written the narrative? I see it time and again when I’m listening to pitches and reviewing query letters. Authors talk around their narratives, discussing themes and reader experience and everything in between.

I completely and fully understand why, because I’ve experienced it myself. Going into my first agent meetings as an author, I was entirely confident. I’d earned an MFA, had decent success in the small fiction space, and a few award nominations. But I’m here to tell you I flubbed the entire thing. I could barely get out my name, let alone articulate anything of use. I used to think that talking about something I created was almost doing a disservice to the work. As if by naming the things that make it what it is, I somehow take away from what I’ve created.

While that sounds poetic and romantic, what took me too long to understand is that talking about the book felt awkward because I wasn’t clear about what the book was. Not the themes or the vibes, but the actual book. In other words, I’d lived so long inside it, I could scarcely say what the main character wanted, let alone what was standing in her way.

It took me years of practice and lots of repetition to define what I was missing: clarity.

Strip away everything extra. By this I mean stop talking around the book (themes, atmosphere, vibes, journeys) and start talking about what actually happens on the page. Clarity doesn’t start with how the book feels. It starts with what actually happens.

Unfortunately, this is where so many writers hesitate because naming the story can feel reductive. You worry that if you say it too plainly, the work might sound smaller than it feels on the page. Or that its complexity will be lost and the magic will disappear.

I promise you none of that will happen.

When you’re able to name what happens on the page, the book stops feeling fragile (and precious) and starts feeling like something another person can experience alongside you.

When you’re clear, you’re able to orient a reader and that’s how you allow other people into your work.

I keep thinking about that panel. What struck me about the authors was how clear they were able to talk about what they write, why they write it, and what a reader is going to experience when they enter the work. They weren’t trying to convince anyone they were worthy. They were simply orienting us, a room full of writers and industry professionals. That’s the part writers miss when they’re waiting for confidence. You don’t need a big feeling to take up space. You just need the ability to describe the thing you made in a way that makes another person understand.

Learn more from Jessica Berg with her Writer's Digest University webinar "How to Write a Synopsis That Reflects the Book You Actually Wrote." Click to learn more.