The advice that the solution when you feel insecure about your work is 'paper craft'

When writing or rereading a work you have written, you may feel anxious that your work is insufficient or poorly done. Brazilian poet Ananda Lima talks about his unique way of dealing with this anxiety, saying that he creates 'paper crafts' as a way to relieve such anxiety.

Ananda Lima on Conquering Pre-Publication Anxiety With Crafting ‹ Literary Hub

https://lithub.com/ananda-lima-on-conquering-pre-publication-anxiety-with-crafting/

Once you've finished writing, you can have people around you or an editor read and proofread your work, which helps you find problems you might not notice on your own and refine your manuscript. However, even if you complete your manuscript, you may still feel anxious about whether it's really a good piece of work until it's time to present or submit it. Lima says that even for works that have been submitted, he often feels a sense of anxiety close to panic during the time it takes for them to be published.

According to Lima, his concerns about the work were not that 'the work may not be good' or 'whether people will enjoy the book,' but were centered on the concrete idea that 'Is there something more I can do for the work?' Lima said that when he had the printed manuscript in his room for proofreading, he would sometimes feel so anxious that he couldn't sleep at night. So, from the work ' Craft ' that Lima was planning to publish, he came up with the idea of 'paper craft.'

Lima first folded a page of the manuscript in half, cut out and pasted parts to make a Christmas card. He searched for paper craft images and videos, tried and tested to recreate it on paper, and created several other pop-up message cards.

The image below shows one of the paper crafts Lima introduced, a cat sitting on the edge of a window. The manuscript was cut out in the shape of a window and folded to make it look three-dimensional.

Lima explains the psychological changes he experienced through paper craft in three points. First, he was clumsy and unfamiliar with the craft, so he had to concentrate hard. Lima tried to relieve his anxiety about his work by walking, but unlike walking, which makes it easy to think about other things, crafting, which requires concentration, helped him forget his worries.

The second change was that the students' efforts at an unfamiliar task resulted in cards that were far from perfect. 'This helped them to process letting go of their fear and embarrassment and to accept that it was okay to make mistakes and look a little awkward,' Lima said.

Third, transforming the manuscript into a message card 'served as a space for me to put all the love and gratitude I felt,' Lima said. Though the manuscript may be imperfect and far from ideal, the paper craft allowed her to feel that it was a gift made with love.