5 Tips for Writing Without Fear

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love publishing

There’s something to be said for writers who are simply unafraid of failing. They just produce, day after day, and hope that they’ll be able to get something out there that people will read and enjoy.

That something to be said is: you and I can be one of them too.

We just have to start writing. We have to go through the act of opening up Medium.com, clicking on the “Write” button, and getting our fingers moving on the keyboard.

And then we must go back up to that green button and hit “Publish.”

We don’t necessarily need an idea ahead of time to do this. Trust me on this one.

My most recent writing was a short story in the fiction realm; something I haven’t done since I was in school decades ago.

Did I intend on publishing fiction when I started writing on that day? Nope.

I’ve been on a quest to write every day for 60 days and, even though a lot of that hasn’t been on Medium (turns out I love journaling), I have gotten rid of my fear of putting myself out there in the process.

Here are some tips I’ve learned to get over our fear and get our writing out there.

#1 — People like us

We’re more likable than we think. That’s what researchers discovered in 2018.

Turns out that we are pretty harsh on ourselves. They call this inability for us to understand how much people like us the “liking gap.”

While the paper itself is about conversations, it’s applicable to writing too. What else is writing but a conversation between the writer and the reader?

The gist of the paper is: while we can easily compare ourselves to what we think is an ideal version of us, and what we can output, other people aren’t privy to that.

Other people have no idea how good we can be, or how good we think we can be. They’re not us, so how could they know this?

So what the did the researchers find?

“[P]art of what makes conversations difficult is that people do not know what their conversation partners really think of them, and so people use their own thoughts as a substitute, but their own thoughts tend to be more negative than reality. The result is that people systemically underestimate how much their conversation partners like them and enjoy their company. Conversations are a great source of happiness in our lives, but even more than we realize, it seems, as others like us more than we know.”

#2 — Medium helps us understand who likes us

Since I started writing on Medium, I’ve gained followers, had claps, been asked to write in publications, been picked up for further distribution, and had a lot of great feedback from family and friends.

Along every single step of the way, I’ve had to learn what all of that means.

There are stats, charts, graphs, and more to let us know that we’re liked and who likes us.

Previously I would write on my blog and just wait for comments to roll in, or see some traffic on Google Analytics, and hope that it meant people actually enjoyed what I had written.

I was so worried, when I got back into writing again, that my words wouldn’t be well-received or that people wouldn’t like what I had to say at all.

But that simply wasn’t true.

So who cares?

Let’s write for someone who may read what we’ve got to say.

Let’s write to make them feel good, or feel something.

Let’s write to make ourselves feel good.

#3 — Writing is an act of self-love

Writing and journaling has been shown time and time again to have positive effects on our health and well-being.

So why fear it? We should embrace it as much as possible.

We should write to take care of ourselves.

Writing not only helps alleviate mental health conditions, but it may just increase our confidence as well.

Putting ourselves out there is difficult in real life. Putting ourselves out there on a website where people are literally paying to read what we have to say is way less scary than real life.

The consequences for writing are almost non-existent. The “worst that can happen” is that we don’t get read very much.

But at least we’ll probably feel better for having done it.

#4 — Only we can write our words

Our stories, articles, poems, listicles, self-help blogs, journals, and words are our own.

There’s no one else who can write them.

Leaving a lasting legacy in this world is one of our greatest achievements possible. A part of that is simply writing down who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, or what we experience.

Choosing to not share our words out of fear, means they don’t get shared. They simply run around in our head where no one else can find them.

We should never make choices on the basis of fear.

#5 — Others want to read what we have to say

Myself and others pay money every month to read words on this platform written by people besides ourselves.

Medium had around 100,000,000 monthly readers as of 2019 so there are probably even more today in 2021.

When we’re writing and putting our words out there to share, we have to keep in mind that there’s someone else on the other side of the screen.

When we hit “Publish,” we’re not just throwing our writing out there into the ether never to be seen again.

We’re providing a source of entertainment, solace, guidance, inspiration, relatability, or other wonderful feelings to share with others on the Internet.

The Takeaway

Writing is like any other act of creation. We cannot add more to the world if we are afraid of what may happen when we do. So let’s keep the 5 points in mind when we’re trying to decide if we want to write or if we should hit publish:

1. People like us
2. Medium helps us understand who likes us
3. Writing is an act of self-love
4. Only we can write our words
5. Others want to read what we have to say

We should always make choices basis on love.

Love for ourselves, love for others, love for the act.

“Love is that which enables choice. Love is always stronger than fear. Always choose on the basis of love.”

Day 26 of 60 for developing a writing habit.

Day 18 of 60 for developing a writing habit:

Day 36 of 60 for developing a writing habit: