Writing Is Scary But Not Impossible

Writing is scary if you haven’t done it since high school where writing was for a grade and there were a ton of rules to follow.

We often have legitimate PTSD over getting the rules right and not wanting to appear stupid.

Most of that is because we had to show our writing to someone in authority who had the power to mark all over it with a red pen with messages that said ”Wrong. You are a failure.” 

It’s a wonder we ever write another thing after the age of eighteen.

As adults, we may be called upon to write a report for work or a letter (or more often an email) to someone we care about. Very few of us will volunteer to take notes in a meeting or write an obituary. And yet, a large percentage of the population respond to surveys that they want to write a book. 

Some of us have scribbled in diaries as children and perhaps even tried journaling as we got older, but the fear never really goes away.

• What if someone reads what I just wrote?
• What if I write something I didn’t really want to know about myself?
• My writing is so messy…I can’t stand to look at it.
• I don’t have the time.What is your excuse?

I have said before that there is within us a need to write that is as powerful as the need to eat. We will use all manner of excuses and alternatives to writing that we can think of.

Witness emojis!

We could survive on peanuts and ice cream (though I don’t recommend it!) and most of us manage to survive by signing a few checks and an occasional birthday card. 

What do you do with all the memories you are making every day? Just like bread, they are not going to last without preserving them.

Do you know what you really think about immortality or climate change? It can be too charged to talk about these things with anyone, but you lie awake nights thinking about them. 

One answer to all of these dilemmas is to journal. But how? If you go on youtube you will find people discussing types, and processes, and pens and paper, and just about anything having to do with journaling. 

The problem isn’t too many options to journaling. They are only adistraction. The challenge is to change the mindset that says ‘I can’t write. I never have been able. I’m too old (or young)  to start.

I will be the last person to say you have to write. If you hear that message, it is comiing from deep within your own heart. What you will hear from me is how to be gentle with yourself, how to feed your inner hunger, and how to find the courage to look the fear of writing in the face…and write anyway.