Fear of Writing

Many writers I have read about have always said they started writing at an early age; that they loved to create their own world and to share it with their friends of family.

My own story, however, went a little differently. The very first writing experience that I remember was not a pleasant one. I was perhaps in grade 3 or 4. The class was told to write a short story, on any subject, probably just to demonstrate that we had been listening in class to grammar points and spelling. I watched my classmates as they immediately put pencil to paper, writing furiously to meet the deadline. I watched them, but that's pretty much all I did.

I remember writing my name at the top of the page and then sitting there, staring at a blank piece of paper. Nothing came. I sat there for a full half hour, trying to convince myself to write even one word. In the end, the teacher came around to collect the sheets. I handed mine in completely blank, except for my name.

Later on that day the teacher took me aside and asked me why I hadn't completed the assignment. I couldn't come up with a good excuse. She gave me the option to do the assignment during recess. I can't recall what I said, but I was a stubborn child, so that's probably how I ended up at the counsellor’s office. After much finagling, he or she was able to convince me to write something down. I have no idea what I wrote, but I do recall hating every moment of it.

Obviously, I overcame my loathing of writing to actually become a writer myself, but as I think back, I can actually see why I stubbornly refused to write, how that continues to affect me today, and how it may help other aspiring writers who are having trouble getting past the blinking cursor on the screen.

There is a reason I didn't put pencil to paper that day in the classroom, which has nothing to do with having nothing to write about. Creative writing lays bare your soul. Your thoughts are put on the page for anyone to read. I was a very shy child and I was unnaturally uncomfortable in sharing my inner thoughts with anyone. Of course, not all writing can reveal your innermost thoughts. I could have written a description of a TV show or what I had for dinner, anything innocuous. But for me, sitting there with the pencil in my hand, I felt as if my teacher were asking me to strip my mind and lay it on the page. That was something I just couldn’t do.

As time passed, my shyness ebbed. I discovered that I quite enjoyed writing and that I wanted to transfer my hurricane of thoughts to a sheet of paper. Sometimes it was even cathartic. But, in the back of my head, there was, and still is, a voice that tells me that I should not, at any cost, reveal more of myself then I should.

Lately, my writing has been waning because every time I go to continue with my story, I am at a loss of what to say. I hem and haw and waste my time on the Internet until an hour has passed and nothing has been accomplished. I told myself it was writer’s block and that every writer gets it, but I think it is something else, something that many novice writers could associate with.

This is only my theory, and feel free to disagree with me, but I think that the when you have trouble writing, it isn’t necessarily writer’s block, it’s fear. Fear that when someone reads your work they won’t like it, fear that you have nothing relevant to say, fear that your skills aren’t up to par with your favourite author, fear of failure.

Of course, fear is only one aspect preventing a writer from doing what comes natural, but I think that for beginners especially, this can be problematic. How you deal with this is up to you, but I think it’s something worth thinking about. When it comes down to it, fear is something that prevents you from accomplishing your goals.

When you are sitting at your computer, struggling to come up with the next line, chapter, stanza, verse, etc, think about what is causing the delay. If you find, like in my case, that it was fear holding you back, fight back and write. Even if all you’ve written is garbage, at least you have taken the first step to overcoming fear.

The eight-year old in me is railing against baring my soul, but the writer in me knows that it is just what is called for to continue the adventures of the characters on my page.