Categories: HEALTH & WELLNESS

Five Steps to Overcoming Writing Anxiety

So you’re thinking of writing a blog? Why not, its a great place to start and practice your writing and for those of us who are inclined to put our thoughts down on paper, writing a blog seems like a fine way to engage in a little fun vanity publishing. You’re psyched and ready to begin; you turn on the computer, boot up your word processing program and stare at the blank screen before you. Is this what they mean by writer’s block? No, you have plenty of ideas but you can’t seem to get them out of your head and down on (virtual) paper? It’s writing anxiety, the often paralyzing fear of writing that many writers suffer from to varying degrees. On one hand, we are compelled to write, to shape our thoughts into a coherent and meaningful piece of prose. The problem is this, how do you follow this compulsion if you’re too scared to begin? Here is my get tough strategy to turn your fear into the self confidence you need to acknowledge yourself as a writer.

1. Understand and acknowledge your fear. Fear of writing is based in our understanding that the act of writing is a public one. Even if your essay or story never sees the light of day, the physical act of writing it down makes it potentially public. This is why most writers are very self-conscious folks. Let’s look at it this way; unless we are writing in our private journal, we are writing to be read. This is what excites us but it is also, what scares us.

The first step to overcoming writing anxiety is to recognize it for what it is – a fear of being judged, of not being accepted. Don’t allow yourself to be intimidated by the idea that someone out there might think that what you have to say is dumb, that your writing style is bad, or that your grammar leaves something to be desired. It may happen, all writers who publish, whether it is in a blog, as an article in a newspaper, or as a bestselling novel face criticism. Tell yourself that it’s ok if that happens. An insensitive comment from someone does not make you a bad writer – frankly, it makes you a writer that is being read. There will be other folks out there who will recognize themselves in your writing, who relate to what you have to say and they will tell you so too.

Here’s an assignment for you: Read…not books but blogs and articles, editorials, essays online, in the newspapers, wherever you find them – notice how they’re written. Look for the writer’s style, how well or poorly does he or she use the rules of grammar and punctuation, pay attention to the structure of the piece – how is it put together. Doing this on a regular basis will not only make you a better writer because you will learn how good writers write, but doing this will show you that there are people out there writing, publishing – sometimes for profit, and you are so much better than them. If they can do it…you can do it.

2. Start writing. Just put your fingers on the keyboard and start typing whatever you are feeling, thinking, or agonizing over – write it down immediately. Don’t stop, don’t re-read, don’t edit and most of all, don’t judge. Write until your head is empty. Once it is, stop, walk away, and don’t turn the word processing program back on for at least an hour. Clear your head – go for a walk, play with the dog, do some laundry, listen to music – do anything but think about what you have written. When the hour is up, go back to what you wrote and run the spelling and grammar checker, break up your paragraphs – in other words – edit, but not for content, edit for mechanics and structure. Fix what needs to be fixed grammatically, stylistically, structurally. Be objective and I cannot stress the importance of this enough…don’t judge. Once the glaring grammar, spelling, and structural issue are taken care of, you can do one of two things, a) turn off the computer again and take a break or, b) start step number three. I’m giving you these two choices because writing is a very personal art. We each have our own methods of dealing with the psychological aspect of writing. Some of us need to clear our heads, ruminate and let our thoughts gel while others of us need to run with it, keep up the momentum and don’t stop until it’s finished. It’s your crazy writer’s brain…so it’s your choice on how to proceed.

3. Don’t marry it. You should now have a piece of writing that, on the surface at least, looks normal. Your structure is in place; your paragraphs are broken out, your grammar, spelling, and typos are corrected. Now the real work begins, it’s time to read your work with a critical eye, critical…not judgmental. Edit ruthlessly. Just because you feel you’ve written the most brilliant sentence of your life does not necessarily mean that it belongs in this piece. Don’t marry it, if it doesn’t feel right, cut it out – paste it into a list of brilliant sentences that you can use to springboard into another piece at another time.

During your editing process there are two things you must pay attention to, the first one is your thesis, which simply means, what is your point? I am a very conceptual writer, I love the big picture, but I’m not always good at putting in the concise details that will lead my readers to be able see the picture I’m painting, so I must constantly ask myself – what is your point? Get this bit sorted out and your editing process will be much less painful. Think of your writing as a path from one point to another. It can sometimes be a meandering path, but it still needs to lead the reader to a logical conclusion. If your piece begins to feel like being lost in a maze to you, then to your reader it will be an impenetrable labyrinth – in the dark – on the moon. Remember, be an organized writer and get your readers from the beginning to the end with as few detours as possible.

Now, what about that conclusion? Easy. Once you’ve said what you have to say – wrap it up. A good blog post should be no more than three or four paragraphs – blog readers have short attention spans.

4. Step away. Your piece is finished, you’ve edited and proofread and spruced up the style until your eyes have bled. Now save it in a file labeled New Blog Posts. This will be your first offering to the gods of the blogosphere. Your next step, and this is important, you must do this immediately after finishing your piece. Go online and look for a free blog hosting site such as WordPress, my personal favorite, or BlogSpot, or Windows Live…there are many, many choices so choose one that feels good to you, seems easy to use, and offers as many tools as you can get for free. Set up your blog site, this is the fun part. Make it as uniquely your own as possible then go back to your New Blog Post file, grab your completed piece and publish it. Don’t worry, you are allowed to edit it even after publishing if you happen to have missed that glaring typo. You’ve done it. You have published your first blog post! You have won the writing anxiety battle, but you haven’t yet won the war. You still have work to do.

5) Write every day. Remember that list of fabulous sentences you cut from your piece, take that list and begin to jot down ideas for your next several posts. Get at least five ideas down, pick one, and go back to Step 2, only this time once you have the piece sketched out you can take a longer break – you decide how long but make sure that you finish the piece and post it to your blog within two or three days. Remember, blog reader have short attention spans. If they visit your blog again and you haven’t posted anything new, they will move on.

This last step is crucial, not only to the success of your blog but also to your own personal success in overcoming writing anxiety. The truth of the matter is that the only way to overcome writing anxiety is to start writing and to keep writing. Procrastination breeds anxiety, which leads to self doubt, and once you’ve gone there, it’s hard to come back. Acknowledge yourself as a writer. Writers write every day. As your blog posts grow, so will your self confidence as a writer and in no time you’ll be banging out and posting pieces from your smartphone while standing in line at the coffee shop. Pat yourself on the back – you’ve won the writing anxiety war!