Fear and Loathing

I was always told I had a gift for writing. But honestly, anyone can write well if you follow the conventions of writing and pay attention to the world around you. I've figured out a secret about writers, at least the good ones. Good writers have faith. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all good writers must be religious. But I suppose if you were really good at being religious, you might also be good at writing. The reason being, you have to have faith in the unknown. You could spend years pouring your heart out into your novel and you never know if it will be published, or even liked. These days it's somewhat easy to self-publish, so that's a bonus. But getting people to read and love your work is another thing altogether.

The opposite of faith, in my opinion, is fear. Fear is what keeps you up at night, wondering how things will go when you hit send on that manuscript. Fear whispers in your ear before you even sit down at your computer to finish a paragraph or chapter or even a sentence. It's telling you that you are no good and that everyone thinks you suck at writing and maybe you are misremembering the feedback that told you you were good. Fear is the attention that you have lost in the endless scrolling on social media. You tell yourself that you're researching for the book, but you know that you're just procrastinating.

You start wishing that you never told anyone that you were picking up writing again and that you wish it were a secret. You hope that no one asks you how your "book" is going because all you have is a weak storyline and some character development. It's the same idea you had six years ago and it's the same amount of information you came up with then. Nothing new has come to you since you started "writing your book". You do exercises and writing prompts and write this silly blog all in the hopes that you will turn on the switch that got turned off all those years ago. But fear has his finger on the light switch.

You join writing groups and get writing magazines and learn from videos, blogs, and lessons online. You pick up a bunch of writing books and even write an email to one of the authors, who ironically turns out to have been one of your creative writing professors in college. Full circle. Back at the beginning. Starting over. But starting means actually taking a step forward. Fear is a bastard who is sitting on your chest and praying to the same god that you don't ever start writing. But fear is no match for your words. Your ideas. Your imagination. You outthink him and he falls away, shriveled up in a corner like a discarded jacket, just waiting for you to slip him back on again. You give that pile of clothes away and get back to writing.