This post is part of my ongoing “How to Write When…” series.
Do you ever feel afraid to sit down and write? On the surface, fear may seem like an odd emotion to associate with writing – after all, there can’t be many activities less dangerous than sitting at a computer and typing! But fears about writing are really common and very understandable.
You might have fears around:
- How other people will respond to your writing. You might be worried they’ll be negative and critical about your writing … or you might be afraid that your work, which matters so much to you, will be met with total indifference.
- Whether you can do justice to your idea or your material. Maybe you’re writing about something that’s really important or an idea that you’ve had bubbling away for years
… and you want your writing to be good enough.
- Whether you can make money from writing. I strongly believe that writing is worthwhile whether or not you’re making any money (and we’ll be tackling this issue in another instalment in the how to write when series, next month).
- Wasting your time. Perhaps you enjoy writing but you enjoy lots of other things, too: you’re
afraid that you’ll devote time to writing but not achieve what you’re hoping for. Or maybe you’re afraid you’ll work on the wrong thing and that you should be writing something different instead.
All these fears are very understandable. You may also have writing fears that are tricky to pin down, or fears that may not seem logical to someone else, but that really resonate with you.
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