I’ve been thinking about superheroes lately. In 2021, I watched all of the Marvel movies in order. (Why? I dunno, it was 2021, I was bored. And I wanted to see how they all hung together. It is a MASTERCLASS of series building, btw. But that’s another discussion for another day.)
This got me wondering why superheroes are so appealing to us, and why we keep coming back for more all the time. One of the reasons why Spider-Mankeeps getting rebooted is that Peter Parker (or Miles Morales, depending on who your Spider-Man is) is just a regular kid who has something extraordinary about him. The fantasy of the superhero is that you could be a superhero if you had some kind of extraordinary power too.
But the thing is, you already do! If you’re a writer, you have built worlds in your head, created people and made them do things, and put them through trials and tribulations that you came up with. If that’s not a superpower, I don’t know what is.
So you have a writing superpower, but let’s get granular here. What other superpowers do you have when you write? Are you really good at creating chemistry and fire between your love interests? Can you crank that angst up to 11 and make your readers sob, then get them to a payoff where they’re bursting with joy? Do you always know exactly how your story’s going to go—i.e. it just comes to you whole and all you have to do is write it? Or are you really good at rolling with whatever surprises the story throws at you while you’re writing and then making them work? Are you incredible at time management and pacing yourself so that you can knock out your word count consistently? Or are you super organized and able to juggle writing, promoting, and writerly admin all at the same time?
There are tons more possible superpowers here, and you probably have a combination of these. So I want you to sit for a few minutes and actually write down what you’re really good at when it comes to writing. Have these written down so that you can refer to them during those times when writing gets hard (because it inevitably will get hard at some point or another) and know that these are powers you can draw on in those times.
So own your superpowers, and let’s carry that superhero energy into 2022. I’m hoping for big things for you this year!