Wexel wept.
I’m afraid of writing, I think.
When I try to write I get distracted. I’ll create an untitled document in Google Drive and then immediately open a new tab and scroll on Twitter. After that I’ll scroll on Facebook, even though I know there’s nothing interesting to see on Facebook. Maybe I’ll check my phone too, and find myself scrolling through Twitter again on my phone. What am I doing?
Overall, my maturity decreases when I try to write. I find myself acting and thinking like a younger, more impulsive version of myself. Often I spiral into watching music videos instead of writing. Dumb, bad music videos from pop artists I don’t care for or respect. Yesterday while trying to write I found myself clicking on a video from the rapper Tyga, just because there was exposed butt-skin in the thumbnail. I watched the entire video, and then watched a suggested video that was very similar and also had butts in it. I feel like a baby, entranced by bright colors and sounds. I sit with my computer for long periods of time and feel listless and vaguely hungry, but I can never identify for what.
Sometimes I rub my hands together really fast and create these tiny, thin, rolled up strands of dirt in my palms. I pick at my teeth and gently/rhythmically poke myself in the eye with my middle finger. All of these tics seem to come from a person who is feeling nervous, and, in a deeper, more covered-up way, fearful.
I’m afraid of writing, I think. Most editors would say that this is a weak sentence. It uses a non-colorful and overused verb, ‘am,’ which is hidden halfway behind the sentence’s subject, ‘I’ — which is also non-descriptive and overused. The trailing nominative phrase ‘I think’ is borderline criminal. For one, it’s unnecessary, and for another, it’s bland and wishy-washy. One time a stranger outside of a sandwich shop told me to never say ‘I think.’ He cut me off to tell me this, while I was giving him directions to the nearest bus station. ‘It makes you sound weak, like you don’t have any confidence. Like you’re a pussy.’
We don’t talk enough about how masculinist a process writing can be. How we’re taught to erase and revise.
My English teacher in 10th grade liked to say that the only sentence in the world that can’t be edited is just two words long: ‘Jesus wept.’ I disagree. First off, it’s way too melodramatic. Why not just suffocate me with a wet blanket and call it a day? Also, does the name have to be Jesus? Why not some name we haven’t seen before, like Wexel. ‘Wexel wept,’ is definitely more interesting, and now it’s also alliterative and has a funny irony to it. What kind of guy is Wexel that he’s weeping? Now I want to read more.
So that’s one good reason as to why I’m afraid of writing. Everything I write is subject to intense, unfair and unending scrutiny and critique.
When I decided to be an English major at the end of my freshman year of college, I must have thought that reaching a certain level of competency in writing would make me less afraid to do it. In reality, I spent my college years sharpening the tools I use to critique myself. After having written many hundreds of pages of essays, short stories, poems, and the first draft of a novella, I still feel equally weird and blocked and afraid when I sit down to write. Why?
The easy and obvious answer to this question is that writing is emotional and it leaves me vulnerable in ways I’d rather not be. I’ve decided to start posting here on Medium in order to push myself to be those things in a public way. Frankly I also know that I’m very addicted to the feedback loops of technology and the internet, and rather than break out of those loops entirely, I’m interested in experimenting with leaning into those loops as a way to kickstart my creativity. My goal is to post a little bit of writing every day, and see how things go from there.
Maybe I won’t become any less afraid of writing in the process of doing this, but my hope is that it’ll at least be compelling to see someone facing their fears. I have this lovely vision in my head of settling into a daily routine of publishing my work, and years from now becoming a sort of zen-master of writing. But like many of my exploits, this might also be short lived.
Despite there being a vast sea of Tyga music videos out there to watch, for now I’d like to follow my fear instead.
