This week I’m writing about the one thing that I think stops more people in their tracks when they really want to write more than anything else: FEAR.

We humans are full of fear. About so many things. And that’s okay. BUT… if we really want to write, we have to overcome it. And this isn’t a one-time deal. Our fear is something we have to keep revisiting over and over and over. The fear dragon is that big.

Aside from all the usual fears we might imaging (I’m not good enough, I’ll never make any money doing this, People won’t like what I have to say, People will get angry about what I have to say, People will think I’m weird/crazy for thinking that, etc. etc. etc…), I think there’s one fear, above all others, that stops many people from honoring their compulsion to write.

FEAR OF EXPOSURE

It’s HARD to acknowledge some of thoughts we have knocking around inside us, let alone share them with strangers, and maybe even more so with people who know us.

It takes a lot of courage and a strong sense of self to own our thoughts and words. The pain of not writing has to be greater than the pain that comes with the judgments (or our imagined judgments) of others before we can move through the fear and just write.

Natalie Goldberg says: “Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to talk about. Be willing to be split open.”

And In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote about cold cocking the angel in the house (that voice in the head that constantly chastises) with her ink well. Do it! Those voices are the fear. Cold cock the voices. They’re the enemy.

It’s the only way.