The Two Types Most Likely to Feel Like Utter Failures as Writers: INFJs and INFPs

For many years I considered myself an utter failure as a writer. I had a creative writing teacher in college who basically told me that I sucked at writing and I should find something else to do with my life. And the worst part was, I really kind of believed her. Because I had done horribly in every creative writing class I ever took. I came up with ideas for stories, but when I tried to write them down I lost all inspiration. I studied writing craft books, but every time I tried to use the tools they talked about, my story completely fizzled.

I was convinced there was something wrong with me.

It seemed like I just wasn’t cut out to be a writer.

The turning point came when I discovered that I was an INFJ and began to embrace my own intuition. I put down the writing guides and stopped listening to all the advice I found online. I started experimenting with unconventional tools — music, meditation, movement, talking directly to my characters — and everything changed. Suddenly, I wasn’t losing my inspiration halfway through the story, and I found I could work with a cast of characters until I finished an entire novel. This was huge for me. It changed my entire writing life.

I discovered that when I tried to force myself to use rational writing methods like planning, outlining, plotting, etc. I was trying to shove myself into a box that didn’t fit. My characters didn’t want me to decide their motivations for them. The story that had surfaced in my mind wasn’t interested in the acclaim I might receive for what an impressive idea it might be. Instead, my characters were real people, and to me, it really felt like they lived in some sort of alternate universe. It felt like they had picked me, specifically, because they were in psychic pain or experiencing some huge upheaval in their life, and they needed me to tell their story.

My characters and their stories began to feel like a sacred gift I had received, and my task in writing it began to feel like my sacred calling on earth.

This, of course, profoundly changed my relationship with my writing. But then the next hurdle came: who could I talk to about any of this? I sounded melodramatic at best, and crazy at worst. I…