On the Fence About Writing? Read This.

The time to write is now.

Illustration by Cynthia Marinakos.

Are you tossing up whether to start — or continue writing? Perhaps you feel:

• You’ve always wanted to be a writer and you’re sick of thinking and talking about it.
• Enthralled with the idea of having readers like your writing and follow you.
• You’d love to earn a living writing.

Yet at the same time, you aren’t sure if this will be worth the effort.

What if you write and no one notices?

Worse still, what if they notice, but don’t like what you write?

What if they think, who the hell is she? She has no journalism degree. She shouldn’t be writing.

You’re sitting on the fence. Should I write?

I hear you.

I have no writing degree either.

Yet though I’ve written professionally for the past 10 years, I still haven’t felt I was enough as a writer.

A few years ago I started to get an unsettled feeling inside me. Like I had more to do. I wasn’t growing as a person. As a writer.

I wasn’t becoming a better version of myself.