Fear
of Writing
by
Milli Thornton
[Editor's
Note: While this article is about the fear of
writing, its insights and suggestions apply to
other fears as well.]
 Is
writing supposed to be fun? Surely it's better
to suffer. It will make our writing real, give
it depth and integrity.
If
we're not going to suffer, we should at least
work hard. We should be disciplined. We should
think about productivity. A writer is not
going to have a career to speak of unless he
or she is producing at least 1,000 words a
day, right? It's really a number crunching
game, if you get right down to it. Or so the
rumor goes.
Every
writer has a personal tale about the hardships
of writing. And we all know that writing is a
lonely business. Martin Myers made this sense
of alienation adorably quotable when he said,
"First you're an unknown, then you write
one book and you move up to obscurity."
But
this swallowing gulf is no laughing matter. As
we chart our descent into the netherworld of
writing, honk if you know the story already.
Outside,
the sun is shining and the robins are
happily pulling up worms. Inside your snug
little home you're staring into the abyss.
The terror of facing that empty page is only
surpassed by the numbness of your
decomposing mind.
Moments
ago, you were a lively specimen of
resourceful humanity. Moments ago, you were
finding ways to speed through your chores
and your commitments in order to allow
yourself some precious writing time.
But
now that you're seated in front of your
favorite writing implements, you uncover the
bleak truth. You have nothing to say. You
are less inspired than the lowliest drone
sorting microchips on the assembly line. You
are empty. Soulless. Mere space dust
inhabiting a warm body. You have no right to
aspire to that auspicious title, 'writer'.
Where did you come up with the nerve to even
think it?
OK,
so you manage to convince your primal brain
stem that these negative messages are
melodramatic and overblown. You are not
empty. You're not a zombie from the twilight
zone. You even had an idea while you were
waiting in line at the drive-up bank and now
you intend to write it down. You're no
lightweight.
In
fact, you have some guts and you plan to use
them. How can you not be a writer? It's in
your blood. It permeates every neutron and
every proton of your mortal being. It
reaches all the way to your higher self.
Even your past lives were all spent as
Egyptian scribes or Atlantean poets.
Triumphantly,
you break those chains of oppression. You
commit some tentative words to the paper.
One line follows another and voila! you have
a paragraph.
You
resist the urge to reread what you've
managed to get down. You forge ahead and one
paragraph becomes two, then three, then
five. If the dog doesn't throw up and the
phone doesn't ring, you may even write two
pages today. You're doing it! You're
writing. You've defied the laws of
emptiness. You are a god of creation.
But
the internal drag is taking its toll. Even
as you defeat inertia to get those valiant
words down on paper or typed onto your
screen, you are faced with another
self-evident truth: you're boring. Your
writing would put insomniacs to sleep.
You've seen livelier writing on the
dishwashing liquid label that's peeling from
the damp plastic bottle under your kitchen
sink.
The
rush of inspiration you felt in line at the
bank is now in ashes on the page. You're
embarrassed that you ever bragged to your
friends about being a writer. Bragging
leaves you no room to exit gracefully.
Bragging leaves you with no pride and no way
to resume a normal life. If you give up now,
your friends will know what a weakling you
are and they'll never let you live it down.
Why
would anyone want to suffer this way? You
sit there -- dripping with failure, pungent
with the sweat of your fruitless labor. You
realize that you go through this same horror
scene every time you try to write. You start
out on an innocent high and then you
degenerate into a living hell.
When
the hounds of hell finally regurgitate you,
you're limp with defeat. Your skin crawls
with self-revulsion. You look around you and
observe the ordinary world. You can't help
but notice that your family and your friends
are not being consumed from within by this
insidious tapeworm called writing. You long
to veg out in front of the TV with the kind
of serenity you see others reveling in as
their birthright.
You
look in the mirror and tell yourself to get
a life. You decide to exercise at the gym
whenever the urge to write strikes you next.
That way you can put your nervous energy to
good use, instead of doing all that
unhealthy introspection. Instead of
agonizing like a miser over what you have or
haven't written.
The
concept that writing can be fun is
ludicrous. Experience has proven this beyond
a shred of doubt. Fun for others, maybe, but
never for you.
Beyond
The Purge
It
pays to be in the right company. You'll be
safe identifying with this story because I'm
personally acquainted with these same
hellhounds that have been playing with your
emotions. I was not born having fun as a
writer any more than you were, nor did I
believe -- until recently -- that fun was even
possible. I followed the compulsion to write
because I had to, because it wouldn't go away,
even when it was chronically buried in apathy
and depression.
I
considered myself a failed writer and even a
fraud. I would go for long periods without
writing anything. Which -- as you may know
yourself -- is a death unlike any other.
What
caused these painful dry spells where I would
turn away from creative expression? It was
fear of writing, that disease of the heart
that no medical doctor has diagnosed or even
recognized.
The
disease may well be endemic everywhere, but we
don't have the statistics or the studies to
prove it. People are out there self-medicating
against it. They're out there languishing in
writing limbo. Experiencing periods of
remission, then sliding into paralysis again.
Many
people with this affliction lead outwardly
active lives. They may be writing books. They
may even be published authors. Others are out
there in self-help mediums such as workshops
and writing groups. They are practicing
physical therapy, reading their work out loud
in the weekly meetings, standing up to
declare, 'I am an addict'. Writing is still
frightening but they are finding ways to cope.
Discussing the symptoms with others that
understand this disease intimately can be
therapeutic beyond measure.
The
question begs to be asked. Is there a cure for
fear of writing? Am I here to tell you've I've
discovered the antidote?
"Quick',
you say. 'Spit it out! I believe in faith
healing! Heal me with your words!'
There
Is No Cure
I
am here to tell you there is no cure for fear
of writing, except to feel it and use it in
your work. The fear is part of the process and
part of what deepens your cognition. The fear
itself is not the poison. The slow poison is
the paralysis that results from trying to
clench around your fear and isolate it. You
can't purge it like a cancerous cell, unless
you are prepared to lose an essential
function. You can't purge your fear and find a
lasting cure because it's something that
belongs to you.
When
your fear is embraced and acknowledged as an
integral part of you, it becomes
transformative. It becomes a moving energy
that informs your work and gives you the
courage to accept yourself.
There
is nothing I can tell you that will do as much
for you as your own process of embracing the
fear. When you empower your fear, you will see
the myths drop away. Haven't you always been
told that if you 'buy into' fear, dire things
will happen? You will become a 'negative'
person. People will shun you. Your negativity
will draw bad luck or even accidents into your
life.
This
old wives' tale originates from a simple but
profound misunderstanding of fear. When the
channels of what could be or should be
evolutionary fear are shut down, peoples'
lives are cramped and their potential has only
limited energy to work with. Look around you
for a day or two and observe this happening.
There are examples everywhere, both within and
without.
The
fear itself is blamed for this crippling
effect, rather than the continual reflex act
of shutting down the flow of this energy. Fear
has a bad name and we've been taught to
control it or expunge it from our lives. We
can carry on the tradition and shoot the
messenger, or we can allow the fear to help us
widen our boundaries.
Learning
to allow your fear to vibrate is a surprising
adventure. You will find beauty inside
yourself that you didn't believe could be
there. You will grow to like yourself more.
People will want you around. Your experiences
will bring you riches. And maybe best of all
-- you will take off as a writer.
 This
article was excerpted with permission from
Milli Thornton's book "Fear
of Writing", ©1999, published by
Xlibris Corporation, www.Xlibris.com
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