It’s a new year and, as new years always seem to prompt efforts at self-improvement, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I can be a better business woman and writer. That’s why, when Christina Katz, author of The Writer Mama, asked the question How do you rate your self-respect? in her monthly newsletter, it really hit home with me this week. More specifically, Christina asked:

Can you say no? Do you say yes to yield to social pressure and supposed-tos and then suffer for it? Are you catering to too many other people’s needs but burning out in the process? Do you listen to and trust your instincts about what is and isn’t the best way to proceed?

Let’s just say that my honest answers to these questions aren’t the ones I’d like to give.

The good news is I’ve been naturally improving my self-respect as I begin actively pursuing more freelance business. I’m learning how setting my rates, recognizing the value of my time and choosing projects that excite me all contribute to and/or flow out of what I believe about myself as a writer.

Christina’s advice for those of us struggling to respect ourselves as writers is to:

take yourself and your writing career seriously and expect others to take you seriously as well. And when they don’t, hold yourself accountable. Because if you are not receiving the respect you were hoping for, perhaps you aren’t asking for it.

I think this is an excellent point. Often, we (especially the women among us) don’t ask for what we need or deserve. We either expect others to know our needs and meet them automatically or we hope our needs will be met and judge ourselves according to others’ abilities or desires to meet them.

But here’s the thing. We can ASK for what we need. We can set our rates according to our own values and choose to take on only those clients who can afford our services. We can set a regular writing schedule and stick to it, saying “no” to other things that may come up. We can pursue projects that energize and excite us rather than taking the first thing that comes our way. We can believe in our own abilities and trust our own instincts.

We can choose to do whatever it is we need to do to reach our writing goals. And we can expect that others will respect those choices. We deserve that respect — from our families and friends, from our clients, and most of all, from ourselves.