Fear & Writing: The truth behind writer’s block
Fear is a natural part of writing. Some of us may even start writing because of fear. Fear that we’ll lose an idea if we don’t write it down. Fear of emotions and worlds bursting inside of us. Or, even as a way to wrangle the fear that hunts us in our daily lives.
When we’re new, we fear people reading our work. We fear criticism. We fear rejection.
As we grow used to these things and accept them as part of the writing process, new fear emerges. Fear that compliments are inflated. Fear that no one actually understands. Fear that we’ll never finish our work in progress and even if we do —
Fear that we’re wasting our time.
Acceptance of our work breeds new fear as well. Suddenly, we fear attention. Strangers digging into our ideas. We fear living up to the hype, that we’re an imposter. We fear we could have done better. We fear the typo in paragraph two.
Then suddenly, we fear no one will read it. Or that the wrong people will, and then, we fear explaining or defending it. Sometimes, we simply fear we’ve exposed too much.
And when we receive praise, we fear ever being impressive again.
We fear admitting this to other writers, and we fear admitting it to readers because we’re still grappling with whether we’re publishing too much, or more often not writing enough, to validate these fears.
Wherever we are in our journey, we are writing, or not writing, to satisfy fear.
Writers Block, in fact, is usually nothing but fear, disguised as a lack of ideas. Disguised as a busy schedule. Disguised as procrastination.
But Writers Block is also a subconscious comfort.
It’s a familiar fight. Something to commiserate with other writers over without having to judge the quality or quantity of our work. Just by declaring “Writer’s Block!” we’ve not only established ourselves as a writer but simultaneously justified our low word count. We may have even ensured no one will ask serious questions about the WIP (work in progress), all while getting tossed a few free “You can do it”s. By falling into writer’s block, we’ve evaded facing our worst fears and may have even received encouragement to boot.
Not intentionally of course. It’s a subconscious lure.
Not writing offers us a cocoon to hide away. A safe space, regardless of how much we know it isn’t good for us, and thus hate it.
It is important to remember that when we’re in that space, that we’re still writers. Even if we take years or decades of hiatus. Ideas pop up to us all the time. Odd observations. Poetic insights. A way to say that better. But we don’t feel like we’re writers because such insights are so naturally a part of us that we take them for granted, dismiss them as things that wouldn’t have lead anywhere, anyway.
There are lots of reasons we don’t produce written material. Many of them quite valid. The most valid being that every author needs a break at some point. To recharge. To focus on life, oftentimes a life that has become too demanding. But also, to just soak things in.
As David Sedaris says in Theft by Finding, “In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it. Not at your desk, but beyond it. Out in the world where it’s so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.”
There’s no shame in not writing, even though we feel like there is. In many ways, not writing is as much a part of the process as brainstorming, revision, and actual writing.
But if you’re stuck, and frustrated over feeling “blocked,” it’s time to clear your head. Reset.
Forget the pressure of living up to some version of yourself, and just let whatever self you are right now out. Whatever words tumble onto the page, don’t be so quick to judge them. Or, at least let them exist awhile first. Then embrace your skills in revision.
The writer who is always producing excellent on-page drafts is a myth, cobbled together from only seeing the revised and edited sweat-beaten work of those we aspire to be like, and the loss of our ability to love every one of our words the way we did when we first started putting them to paper. When we let our naive, creative spirit run amok all over our journals and ‘first novel’ drafts. When excellence was defined by the joy derived from creation.
That loss of easy excellence, because we now define excellence by different measures, is one we must all face and continue to face. Regardless of how terrible it may seem, it is a right of passage. Not a sign you’re a terrible writer.
The quantity and quality of your words isn’t what makes you a writer. Or to say it another way: A writer that is always and easily putting excellent words to page doesn’t exist, but a writer who is always writing in some fashion does. If you count all the stories that never make it to the page, that get lost in the tangles of our daydreams, washed down the shower drain, and dismissed by our fear, the truth is, we’re always writing even when we’re blocked.
It isn’t that we have no ideas and nothing to say. It is that we have to be brave enough to let them out. To exist before we can change them. To allow them to evolve with time and insight. To expose them to the world.
And being brave doesn’t mean you’re not afraid.
This is what we must remember, especially when we’re blocked.
In this sense, every word we get on the page is a triumph, even when they’re so bad they deserve to be edited into oblivion. Because we’ve left our comfort zone. We’ve faced or evaded our fear, opening ourselves up to new challenges and risks.
Writing is always the riskier move, even if no one reads it.
But the pay off… the release… the escape… the success, however momentary… is always worth it.
To write as a writer, is to let what drives you actually take the wheel, to be who you truly are. And, for those few hours of fevered creation, to escape the fear of who that is, and what it all means.
