A Writer Who Is Afraid to Write

You can love something and be terrified of it, too.

I’m a writer — obviously — but I spend most of my time not writing because actually getting meaningful words onto the page often feels like preparing to pass a kidney stone. It’s going to hurt, so I’d rather just avoid it.

I’m not even old enough to worry about kidney stones. Or maybe I am, I don’t know. I’m 30. Is that old? Whatever.

The point is that writing — personal writing — is so damn hard that you can successfully avoid it for years and still manage to come up with a million reasons to rationalize your passivity. I’ve been writing professionally for years, putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) five days a week, over 160 hours a month, and making a decent salary all the while. Or at least until a week ago.

I got laid off. The first time in my life I’ve ever been exited from a company. Even though it had nothing to do with my work, the sting doesn’t sting less. I’ve been trying to convince myself that this is the reason I haven’t been able to write, but the truth is I’ve avoided my own personal writing long before I started writing full-time for a company.

I think the reason why I was able to write consistently for so long is that crafting words for someone (or something) other than yourself lures you into the false notion of anonymity; my name was attached to my work the entire time, but because I was fed the subject matter, the angle, and the time constraint, the words flowed freely.

I want to be a novelist. I’ve wanted to write a novel since I was 14 years old. At one point in my early 20s when I was single, poor, and lonely, I used to go to bed hugging whatever novel I was reading like a teddy bear. It was my tangible way of holding on to my dream. I will write a book one day, I would whisper to myself in my dark room. My words will fill these pages.

It’s been nearly a decade and I no longer snuggle with books before bed. I have a hard enough time reading them. Somehow, I’ve lost my writing way. The words don’t flow freely on their own, and the acknowledgment that I’ve been professionally writing this whole time only adds to the guilt of that admission.

I’ve been writing someone else’s words and completely neglecting my own. This piece of work is the closest I’ve come to writing honestly. It feels good. It also feels scary, like I’m about to jump off a cliff without having double-checked if the parachute is properly intact. I’m idly aware that I might’ve stumbled into my solution, but I can’t be sure I’ll catch my footing quick enough to employ my parachute, or simply freefall without ever checking to see if the parachute is working, convinced it was faulty from the outset.

We can want something so bad and be petrified of pursuing it, too. Sometimes, the only sensible thing to do is close your eyes, raise your arms, and jump. Or in this case, hit the publish button. Just don’t look down.