Writing Is Not for Wusses… so Zip Up Your Warrior Suit (You’re Braver Than You Think)

Being a writer is not like any other profession. Our work is literally who we are. Not to laud it over book keepers or bakers who do an honest day’s work, every time a writer ‘goes to work,’ we’re in the business of self-exposure. Come to think of it, writing has more in common with a career in pornography than any other.

We’re petrified of being humiliated. Terrified of feeling too much. Afraid of revealing too much and being rejected. Anxious that we’re not good enough. Frightened that it will, in the end, all have been a waste of time.

Fear eats us for breakfast. It decides how brave we get to be in each moment. If we’re not careful, we become fear’s bitch.

So we need courage. Big brave boots.

What feeds courage is our presence. We have to gather ourselves into the moment and banish worrying about the future and the gazillion ‘what if’s…?’ that just want to come and raid the party.

Fear by its nature is future-oriented. It thrives on uncertainty. It sabotages our vulnerability and whips it until it’s cowering in the corner, afraid to step out and test what the world is like when we’re undefended and real. Fear whispers, ‘People will laugh.’ It sniggers, ‘You’ll look foolish.’ Fear undermines our conviction. It tests whether in fact we have found a solid piece of ground to stand on we can call our own. And in this way, it helps us get clarity.

So what can fear teach us?

It can teach us to look at our lives and work out who we are. Unapologetically.

It can embolden us to feel the things that have happened to us deeply and to write from a place of trembling.

We can learn to trust that when we write authentically from our personal experience that it speaks into the universal experience, the great soup in which we are all bobbing around with other soul-dumplings, who far from laughing at us, will knock into us gently with a ‘yes, me too…’

And in Pink’s words: we can learn to be ‘brave in our beautiful mistakes.’

I salute you as you launch into your writing. It isn’t for wusses. Bring forth gently what needs you to be strong.