If you struggle to share your genuine self in your writing, you’re not alone. When I worked as a managing editor at a publishing company specializing in self-help books, I witnessed firsthand the internal conflict authors confronted as they tried to zero in on their messages.

I was minding my own business recently when someone close to me called me ignorant. I’d lapsed into a daze, slipped up, made a mistake, forgotten something important—because I’d been distracted by something more interesting. I’d chosen wonder over logic.

We run into trouble with writing and creating when we consider a project so important it triggers the specter of failure. We yearn for the powerful result, the creation that changes someone or shifts something. But the I’m not good enough alarm sounds and here come the old bastard thoughts.

Deep in the suburbs north of Atlanta, in a nice house on a cul-de-sac, I sat next to a young man in his dad’s office above the garage. Edward’s parents had asked me to talk with him about his struggle with writing. He seemed nervous but willing.

We often use the verb to write as if it’s one action, but writing is a multi-stage process that includes daydreaming, thinking, collecting, deciding, polishing, and other tasks and sub-tasks. We might not be naturally awesome at every single stage of the process—nor must we be.