Good Morning! Ready to write?
I need to get out of this chair. I want a cigarette. I’ll just reheat my coffee and check my email. Damn. I just wasted ten minutes that I’ll never get back. Crap. I’ve only written three bad sentences so far. What am I playing at? This is a waste of time. OK, here goes. Wait. There’s no way I could ever publish that. It doesn’t matter. I’m old anyway. Who would publish me? God, I wish I had a trust fund. I need to find more work. Screw it. I should just become a phlebotomist.
This is what my writing anxiety looks like more days than not, and I’ve made my living as a professional writer for more than 25 years.
Writing anxiety is not just for novices and college freshman.
Writing anxiety is a real thing that affects people at all stages of their life and career—a Google search returned 442,000,000 results in less than a third of a second—and its symptoms can be physical, cognitive, and behavioral.
- Do you have inexplicable indigestion, rapid heartbeat, sweating palms, or muscle tension in your jaw, shoulders, or back?
- Does your brain get foggy as soon as you open a Word document?
- Do you feel bored and listless or easily distracted?
- Are your thoughts racing about everything else you need to get done?
- Are you procrastinating?
- Are you paralyzed by perfectionism?
Where does it come from?
Writing anxiety is fueled by fear of failure and rejection and doubt about your talent and powered by the dread of being judged harshly for your ideas, opinions, grammar, syntax, word choice, education, gender, race, or sexual orientation. It’s also rooted in the traumas we endured when we truly expressed ourselves and the countless unhealed creative wounds inflicted by teachers, coaches, and well-meaning but clueless people.
Another challenge: The inner critic.
For most of us, a slice of our personality operates below our awareness and observes, monitors, and corrects our behaviors. This inner critic often runs on auto-pilot and feels so normal that you might not recognize it. It may even adopt your voice.
While the inner critic may have a place during the editing and polishing phase of a draft, it often impedes creativity and expression with excessive “shoulds and shouldn’ts” and a barrage of discouragement. It must be neutralized.
Here are some practical ways to tame your writing anxiety.
- Eat well, stay hydrated, and make sure you get enough sleep. Listen, if this were easy, I wouldn’t have to include it in every article I write. But believe me, if you are hungry and telling yourself you will eat lunch as soon as you hit 500 words, those 500 words are going to be much harder to reach BECAUSE YOU ARE HUNGRY. Eat a sandwich, OK?
- Take a break. Take a short walk, grab a shower, or run out for a cup of coffee. The brief change of scenery will loosen you up. Don’t worry. That page of half-baked sentences will be there when you return.
- Pre-write. Spend a few moments organizing your thoughts. This works especially well if you feel stuck or jumbled. You can read more on prewriting here.
- Freewrite. Set a timer for three minutes and write whatever comes into your head. Don’t worry about the quality of prose or grammar or even making sense. Just write to hear the tapping of keys or the scratching of pen on paper. It will help you take yourself less seriously. That’s a good thing.
- Think small. Do you know how The Great Wall of China was built? One stone at a time. And do you know how you finish a blog, essay, or novel? One sentence at a time. That’s all. Trust your sentences.
- Call a writer friend or writing partner. No one knows how to bitch and moan quite like another writer.
- Put your inner critic on ice. Two things that help quell the inner critic: mindfulness meditation (lets you observe your thoughts in real time) and psychotherapy.
Sometimes you have to go deep.
Last Fall I had the pleasure of hearing coach, wellness counselor, and writer Ryan Spear speak at a writing retreat, and he said one thing that knocked me out cold: “The fear of self-expression is often a trauma response.”
The two questions writers must ask are: 1.) How was my true self-expression discouraged, punished, or feared when I was growing up? 2.) What am I prepared to do about it now?
Spear encouraged us to make a two-column chart. In column one, we listed the symptoms of our writing resistance; in column two, we identified thoughts and actions that could counter them. For example:
Try it for yourself. You may be surprised by what lurks below the surface.
If you are having persistent issues preventing you from doing something you love, something that brings you joy, you may want to spend some time delving into these issues. A mental health professional or personal coach can help, too. It’s money well spent.
We’ve all been through it.
Well, maybe Joyce Carol Oates has not been through it, but we can only hope she has her bad days, too. Just remember: Feeling writing anxiety doesn’t mean you aren’t cut out to be a writer. It simply means that you are a human being who cares deeply about what you’re doing and wants your prose to shine. Keep doing the work and it will.
