Graphophobia 2!

In response to Roz Warren

Roz Warren — interesting piece on Graphophobia, and I was wondering if there is a word for the opposite to Graphophobia: and if not I thought maybe — Imaddictedtowritingandcantstopophobia.

To me, indeed to most of us chucking all our words at these pages on a daily basis, the idea of someone being unable to write seems almost impossible.

I know we all get a quiet period when ideas have stopped flying into our heads and we wonder if the glory days are over and we will never find another topic to write about, but we all also know that this feeling is temporary and it won’t be long before we’re sitting up at all hours again, giving the keyboard a bashing.

I’m fascinated and shocked that anyone could fear being observed as they write, or that their posture could be criticised. That smacks of much deeper rooted problems to me.

I can kind of understand that someone might feel nervous about committing their ideas to a forum where they could be read by absolutely anyone, worldwide, but so what?

What does it matter if someone, somewhere reads your views on something?

That person may be the commissioning editor of some prestigious magazine and they may like your style and offer you a few grand a week for a regular column — er, those things do happen, don’t they? So there’s only positives there.

I really can’t see what sort of negative there could be unless of course you have some kind of perverted or illegal thoughts in which case it doesn’t take a Nobel winner to see that you’d be best keeping those ideas to yourself.

And as to the question ‘at the mere mention of writing, do you develop nausea?’ Well, that’s an interesting question because really it depends on who is doing the writing; there are people on Medium that make me sick, that’s definitely true, but I think I’m missing the point there.

If you get a dry mouth and moist palms you’re probably taking some drug you’d be best to leave alone, and the same goes for a rocketing heart rate and legs turning to rubber.

Oh, and I completely agree with you, Roz, I’m done with the self-help and get rich quick lot and I’m making a pact here and now; I will never read another article that starts with either ‘How to’ or How I made.’

That’s it, I feel clean now, absolved.

Now, what was I writing about before I chanced on to your interesting post?