How to Write Through Your Fears: If You Can Love, You Can Write

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.

A “real” writer would be able to write this more easily.

A “real” artist would get busy already instead of flapping around with supplies.

What’s wrong with me?

Every attempt at an original creative act that devolves into worry or procrastination or discombobulation digs the uh-oh brain rut a little deeper, making authentic expression seem more out of reach. Fear has gotten in the way of exploration.

Steady on. There’s a straightforward way out.

Close your eyes, put a hand on your chest, take a deep breath—center your focus in some way that works for you—and tell yourself the reason you care about what you’re trying to create. If you didn’t care, fear wouldn’t divert you. So set down your pen, take your fingers off the keyboard, turn off the tattoo machine, and allow yourself to love. There in the privacy of your own mind, tell yourself the deepest truth about why this particular project matters so much to you. What is the heart at which you’ve aimed your cupid’s bow?

If the cheesiness of this exercise feels like a barrier, take another deep breath. No one else needs to know what goes on inside you. No one else, ever, needs to or has a right to know your deep motive. Whatever you create will stand on its own. If you share the project’s origin story, you don’t have to include the core of your motivation. Seriously. If you need a bio or artist’s statement to go with your creation, pick and choose from the infinity of who you are, but don’t ever obligate yourself to share the entire origin story unless you want to.

This distinction between me in here and me out there is key. A turning point for the sensitive, empathetic, intuitive, creative people I work with is often the conscious awareness that they can tell themselves the truth on the inside and then, as a separate process, decide how much, if any, of their truth to share with the outside world. Not sharing all of us doesn’t mean we need to lie. It means we allow ourselves to know all of our own selves as deep down as we can go, but we give ourselves permission to only share as much as we want to in any given situation. Through this self-loving distinction, we free more of our creative spark, because we welcome inner truth without the fear of exposure.

The real you is the radiant prize inside. Not the you as seen through the perspectives of the family you grew up in, the social groups you do stuff with, the critics online, or the editors at the publishing house. When you close your eyes and admit to yourself what you really love—the heart of the issue, however weird—that’s driving you to want to create, you claim yourself as the ultimate prize. You’ve located the power source.

Creation without connection to your own heart is tough. Fear, procrastination, confusion, and worry are signals to refocus. Check your aim. Are you searching for approval from outside, trying to discern your brilliance based on how they will see your project? That’s not a steady or reliable power source.

Be selfish. Hold yourself close. Savor the love driving you to create. Fill yourself to the brim until your aim is true.

We create because we want to express something. I’ve been amazed many times by what happens when someone shifts their focus from I can’t write this to What do I love? If I’m in conversation with them when this happens—when they release their grip on which words should I write? and clasp love instead, I catch my breath at the beautiful flow of words that pours out of their mouth. Touch the truth of why you really care, and the words take care of themselves.

Champion your real self first. Creative expression will come to pay homage.

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Grace Kerina is a writing coach with more than twenty years of experience helping authors find their true voices. To receive the free PDF “50 Creative Writing Prompts for Intuitive Writers,” sign up for her mailing list here. She also writes novels as Alice Archer.