The 3 Fears That Stop Writers from Writing
Doubt stops progress. Here are some strategies to move past it.
The doubts of a new writer.
Believing in myself has been one of the biggest challenges for me as a writer hobbyist. I don’t have a writing degree and work with people who have an intimidating amount of knowledge about the written word.
I never studied the greats as ‘real’ writers have. So, whenever I put a piece out there, I have to deal with that creeping doubt that I haven’t paid my dues. Fears like, my writing is too simple.
I remember the first time I shared something I wrote on Facebook — I hit the post button and closed my computer instantly. I didn’t want to see if it had likes.
Yet, not even 10 minutes later I was compulsively checking my phone to see what kind of traction I had. Heart racing the whole time.
Here we are envying those who may not have the talent, but are succeeding through sheer self-promotion. While perfectionism is often the scapegoat of blame, these deeper fears can stop progress in its tracks.
Fear #1 — Why would anyone want to hear from me?
After spending a couple of months writing my book “What Should I Do Next”, I found myself with a complete lack of marketing confidence. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell my good friends that I wrote my first book. For some reason, I was embarrassed about it. Like I didn’t deserve to promote my work — It was like I didn’t earn it.
Here is what changed. I adopted a practice from Cal Newport’s ‘Deep Work’ called ‘productive meditation’. Essentially this means spending time in silence reflecting on a specific problem.
The goal of productive meditation is to take a period in which you’re occupied physically but not mentally — walking, jogging, driving, showering — and focus your attention on a single well-defined professional problem”. — Cal Newport, Deep Work
I found myself working through the question of “why am I so afraid to put my work out there?” I sat with this question for a while. Eventually, something clicked. The core of my concerns came from a feeling of insecurity. The question transformed into “Why would anyone want to hear from me?”
Mindset shift #1 — Why not me?
In today’s noisy online world, credentials are thrown around with authority. They apparently build trust. I realized that much of my fear of sharing was because I felt like I didn’t pay my dues. That I didn’t have enough expertise to write a book on a topic (Finding Passion in Your Career).
And that’s a limiting belief we all need to remove. No one needs the expertise to share their experience. Your perspective is valuable and unique as long as you come from a place of authenticity. Authenticity in this case means saying what mean and saying what you think — as opposed to saying what you think you are supposed to say.
Why should the person who spent 20 years studying psychology be the only one that can share their human experiences? The credibility that you have is that you are a human and you’ve dealt with struggles. And if you figure things out about your experience, it’s absolutely worth sharing.
Fear #2 — I’m not good enough yet.
It used to take me a long time to write articles. I started a blog in October 2019 and wrote a 1500-word article weekly to bi-weekly. It was a very slow pace. I didn’t have a good cadence and wasn’t sure how to say what I wanted to say.
When I would get close to ‘finishing’ an article I would agonize over the details. Like how did it read? Did I have the right tone? This would cause me to over-edit — add new things, and eventually completely change the point I was originally trying to make.
I would get to the point where I felt confident and proud. Then I would post it. Guess what happened- I would get no views.
My mind wasn’t getting it. At the time, I thought that the quality of my work would attract and engage readers. Totally disregarding the fact that my 1500 words were a small blip on an internet filled with billions of words. My agony over every detail killed my momentum.
Eventually, the weekly articles stopped. I was discouraged and lacked direction for a while. That was when I found Medium.
Mindset Shift #2 — More material = better writing
Stumbling across Medium was such a game-changer. It gives individuals a platform to put their concepts, ideas, and art in front of thousands of people. This doesn’t happen with a blog.
After reading dozens of articles that cite the frequency of publishing more often, I realized I needed to change my approach. While I don’t necessarily agree that publishing every day is the only way to find success- there is some merit in increasing one’s output.
While I am still ramping up my personal production– I am starting to see the results of progress over perfection. From April to May, I multiplied my Medium income by 10x. Before I get called out, this 10x was going from $0.04 to $4.42 Month over Month.
This shift isn’t about income though, it’s about improving quality through repetition and practice. The more I fearlessly progress and share, the better my writing becomes. I get to see what type of writing feels good. There are certain pieces that I wrote in 25 minutes that far outperform content that took several writing sessions.
Frequent feedback = better adjustments = increased results.
Fear #3 –I don’t have anything unique to offer
For a long time, I thought that the internet was saturated with writing. Especially the type of writing that I wanted to do. Let’s call that life lessons in personal development, productivity, and marginal improvement.
It seems that anything that I wanted to talk about had already been said. When I first started writing online, I would come up with a topic that I had a perspective on. Before writing I would use Google to see what type of content was already out there. Big Mistake.
Of course, people had already covered the topics that I wanted to. They also had more experience in the area. After I read through the search results, I had no motivation to add yet another iteration on ‘how to be more productive’.
This was another mindset that had to be overcome. I started to think about the journey a bit more. As in how I got to the specific lesson I wanted to share. That’s what made me realize that what was unique to me was my specific approach.
Mindset Shift #3 — My journey and perspective is unique
What helped me work through this challenge was understanding the concept of ‘Survivorship bias.
Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways - Wikipedia
For some reason, human psychology doesn’t allow us to consider those that failed. When we look up things like ‘how to be a successful writer’, we are hearing from the few individuals who have reached a certain ‘success’ metric. However, what we don’t consider is those who are still on a path.
There are writers who make $100,000 a year, and there are writers that make $5,000 a year. Both individuals will have insights into writing. The ‘struggling’ writer may have just started and had a beginner’s insight that the experienced ‘success’ story may not highlight. Alternatively, the writer currently making $5,000 a year would be much more helpful to someone who wants to go from 0 to getting paid work.
A better way to say this is that your experience is the selling point. Your personal perspective is an interesting part of writing. We all start at different points and learn in different ways.
If you feel like something’s already been said, it probably has. But it hasn’t been said by you. Give it a shot, you might come up with something truly inspiring.
You don’t have to be an expert to share your experience.
Doubt stops progress.
Remember fear and doubt stops progress. It’s helpful to think about odds here. The chances that the one piece of work you complete will be your big break is rare. The more you create, the better chance you have to make something memorable.
To create a great sculpture, you need material. Your first crack at sculpting might leave you with a messy oblong sphere, but now you have material to work with. When you receive feedback about how bad your art is, you can work to improve it. Each iteration more material is added. Eventually, you have enough material and skills to make something beautiful.
That’s why it’s important to become someone who not only thinks of solutions but believes they are capable of implementing them. That’s a type of confidence worth developing.
Every human has experiences. These perspectives are worth sharing. It may sound like I’m advising everyone just to write whatever crap want. That’s not the case. I’m more so looking to empower you to share.
It’s important because there are perspectives that need to be shared. New ones. There are many ideas and ways of doing things that are simply accepted because of tradition. So go out there and write with confidence and promise- the world is waiting. Thanks for reading 😊