I think credibility, for writers especially, has two integrally linked parts: inner and outer. Inner credibility is the trustworthiness you build with yourself, and outer credibility is what you maintain with readers, agents, editors, and other writers and professionals.

Since inner credibility begins and ends with the self, you might think it is the easier of the two forms to obtain. Not so.

Inner credibility is the hardest to build because you can break your word to yourself as many times as you want and no one else will know. (Unless you believe in God, and then God will know. And therein, in my humble opinion, is just one of the many benefits of believing in God.)

If you lie or break a commitment to other people, you will surely come to a pass where you’ll be embarrassed and mistrusted. But if you lie to yourself, there’s really no penalty,
except ...

When you lie to yourself, you lose credibility with your subconscious, and for writers, who depend on themselves alone produce their fiction, this is deadly.

For example, let’s say you promise yourself you are going to enter that crucial contest. There’s the commitment: to hone the entry, fill out the forms, write the check, and mail it all.

But “stuff” gets in the way. You catch a little cold. You have unexpected out-of-town company. The weather turns unseasonably warm during the week when you should be preparing your entry, and you are dying to plant flowers. You end up skipping the contest. No one will know, anyway. No one except you.

What’s the harm? Well, precisely this. The next time you tell your subconscious, “We are going to produce 5 new pages today, no matter what!” The subconscious just shrugs and says, “That’s what she said about that contest.”

Uh oh. You have lost credibility with the self.

This process is repeated, automatically, every time you break your word to yourself, until you have almost no inner credibility left. What is the cure?

You already know the answer don’t you?

You keep every commitment you make.

About now, I can hear all of you yelling: But, Darlene, that’s so hard!

Tell me about it. Credibility with the self has been one of my most difficult hurdles. That’s why I’m being so mean about it.

Let’s look at the cure once again. Notice I didn’t say you keep every commitment to yourself. I said you keep every commitment you make. Every commitment. Period. The ones to yourself as well as the ones to your spouse, your kids, your boss, your church, your irritating little mother-in-law, your writer’s group. Every dang one.

Now you’re saying, Okay, just bury me and get it over with.

If keeping every single committment sounds impossible, it is. For about a week. Then you learn to keep your big mouth shut and stop making so many commitments, and --Presto!-- you’ve suddenly got more time to write. Keeping every single commitment, no matter how small, will teach you not to overcommit, automatically ensuring that you select the most important priortities and stick with them.

When you start doing everything you say you will, your word eventually becomes law to yourself. Eventually, when you tell yourself, “I am going to write that article today,” your subconscious will not argue or dream up tricky little diversions to keep you from doing it.

Once you build this type of credibility with your inner self, it will be less stressful (although never easy!) to build those piles of pages that lead to novels. Deadlines come to mind here. This doesn’t mean you will be Miss Perfect Writer and never screw up. But if you forget something or get behind and realize that you are going to be late, you will immediately call or e-mail and explain that you screwed up. That builds credibility, too, which brings me to the second kind of credibility, outer credibility.

Outer credibility is what you display with your agent, editors, readers. This means you strive to do what you say you will do in a timely manner. You meet the deadlines, show up at the booksignings, answer the reader mail.

But on a deeper level, the second type of credibility involves things like delivering a quality story, being true to your voice, and, of course, never ever using somebody else’s ideas or words.

When a certain writer lifted whole paragraphs from another famous writer’s works, the publishing community was horrified. People wondered why a woman who had written millions of wonderful words of her own would need to steal even one syllable from another writer. It didn’t make sense, and still doesn’t.

As writers we are all constantly on the prowl for the great one-liner, that clever phrase, that cute bit of dialogue. Is it stealing when we take our words out of Granny’s mouth instead of a bestseller’s? Of course not. But if somebody else’s expression or joke has made it into print, watch out.

There are several reasons to be careful when you are weaving and patching in stuff you’ve heard here and there. Pretty soon the texture of your piece will start to sound like somebody else, or worse, a disjointed cacophony of many voices. (Notice how I just go ahead and mix a metaphor when I’m inclined to? That’s my voice, honey. Makes you wonder how I ever sold, doesn’t it?)

Credibility of voice is an even bigger issue than using only your own words and ideas. Voice is a personal, psychological thing. It’s what you have to say to the world that no one else can say in quite the same way. Credibility of voice is being yourself in print.

If you don’t have anything to say to the world, you’d be better off asking yourself why than trying to be derivative of the current market or echoing another writer’s worldview. Examine your life.

You may be living in a self-made universe that is entirely too homogenous. Maybe you don’t read widely enough, or maybe you need a Great Art Fix, or to listen to some alternative music. Maybe you need to get out and mix with people more. Go to a synagogue or mosque one week-end instead of a church, or vice versa. Go to the nursing home and sit with the most Ancient One of the Ancient Ones residing there. Go to a preschool and giggle with the three-year-olds. You cannot enrich the texture of your writing by sitting on your can watching the same old T.V. shows week in and week out.

When I was involved in politics, it often struck me how the process of running for public office was entirely too insular. Everything was always so same. The same folding chairs, business suits, church dresses. The same speeches and banquet food. Applause. Hand clasping. Back slapping. I wanted to scream, show up in a leather mini-skirt and purple eye shadow and ask, “How the heck do you expect to represent real people if you never see any?” It’s not that the people at those canned events weren’t real; they just weren’t acting real. They were acting the part of good political followers.

As writers, our job is to NOT ACT THE PART, at least not on paper. We have to be as authentic in our voices as we can be. We have to get out with real people so we can create credible (although, in the case of fiction, not real) characters.

I guarantee that if you go to the rodeo, the baptism, the crime scene, with the sensibilities of a writer, your stories will take on a richness and a texture and a credibility that is uniquely your own.

And that will be your highest form of credibility, both inner and outer, for as long as your chose to put words on paper.

Author’s note: I know the methods outlined in this article work because I’ve used them for years. I have seen these techniques suggested in many forms by many writers: Dorothea Brande, Peter McWilliams, and Julia Cameron to name only a few.

Since 1998 Darlene Graham has sold 10 novels which have been published in 12 countries. And she has tried to maintain her credibility every step of the way!