The Many Masks of Fear
How every writer’s wily foe returns again and again
I hit a Medium milestone last month when an article I wrote was selected for “further distribution” for the first time. It was exciting, to say the least, and led to more reads and views for anything I’ve written on here. By far. After a couple of months of learning the ropes, the validation felt like a breath of fresh air. So why was I suddenly petrified to write the next thing?
I came to Medium because I wanted to write and share something every day. I’m a screenwriter by trade and while I love it, there is a certain loneliness and delayed gratification. The chance to write whatever I wanted, when I wanted, and have people read it immediately felt like a nice change of pace. What I didn’t realize at the time was how much I needed it.
2020 was a weird, terrible year. I fell into many funks, writing and otherwise, but I as the year wound down, I could feel my confidence slipping with each passing month. Posting here every day brought back some writing rhythm and my curiosity. I had never blogged or written internet articles. I was a complete noob and that was liberating. Plus, having a structure to blue-sky ideas and an audience to write towards made writing actually fun again.
