I’ve always been interested in writing, and always knew a book was in me…somewhere. I certainly knew that I wanted to write a book and publish it, and that’s when I hit the wall every time. I’d just freeze, my chest would get tight, and I’d run away as I usually did.
I didn’t understand it. I never had a problem with journaling. The words just came out, and when it came to writing my plans out, they looked organized to me, but when it came to writing that others would read, the panic button went off, and I started procrastinating and using avoidance strategies like a pro. And I had no idea where to begin writing a book. I got so overwhelmed even thinking about it. It was exciting thinking about money I would earn from my writing, but who would read it, again, I froze. I once again though writing books were for others who were smarter, had a background, were experts in the genre of books they wrote, whether fiction or nonfiction, and I had no expertise that I knew of. My own family didn’t even listen to me. Most of the time they ignored me. They didn’t even roll their eyes at me, as far as I saw. The only expertise I seemed to have was failure and waiting for others to offer to help me. Guess what? That person never showed up.
I simply did not believe that I could write a book. My attempt to write, and have it criticized by my folks was enough to stop me. I believed in that lie for so long.
And then one day because of what I read about Connie Green, I decided to stop letting me psych myself out, and decide to try again. I decided that enough was enough and I was going to finish something this year, even if it was just a short nonfiction book or a report. Just one to say I did it, then start another one.
What I’m going to talk about today is how fear stopped me, and that I have decided to start anew. As someone who thinks she might have ADHD and so has trouble with organization, planning, distraction and writing all over the place, I’ve decided to to give it one more try. There’s just something in me that won’t let me give up.
Fear stopped me in my tracks
I think, for me, at least, I don’t know for the rest of you, that writing is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, there’s the exhilaration of actually seeing the words appear on the screen sometimes without any effort, but on the other hand there is the fear of having others read it and punching great big holes in whatever I write. I worry that I am writing too much, that it’s too disorganized, that my ideas are all over the page.
I think it goes back to my high school days, when a friend, now my husband encouraged me to write a story. I did, the first chapter anyway, and foolishly showed to my folks and asked what they thought of it. They said it was too disorganized and they couldn’t make sense of it, that I just couldn’t write. They implied it was because it was too hard, which was their usual excuse, so, I just assumed it was true in this case as well.
I was stunned. It didn’t occur to me at the time. I mean this was my family! They didn’t tell me where to go to get help, or that it had potential, but I needed help to get it organized or where to go to get that help.. I only saw at the time, it was bad writing, so my new-found project withered and died because of fear. Fear that they were right and that I couldn’t write. At least that’s how I interpreted it, for fiction, at least.
So I ran, scared. I believed at the time, being only 18 or 19, that if my folks didn’t like it, who else would? I mean they knew what was best for me , right? I mean, if I was a good writer, wouldn’t they say what I did right? If they didn’t point out where I was going in the right direction, was any of it any good? And there was none of that.
It never occurred to me to question what they were saying. I felt that I was living at their sufferance, that I couldn’t make it on my own. I wasn’t stupid, but I felt that I had to please them in order to continue living there. I honestly wish I hadn’t believed them without question, that I had been so gullible. It never occurred to me that I was being sabotaged by my own family.
And if I was just supposed to “know” what I was doing right, maybe I had no creativity at all and just to give up. So I did what I usually did, and being the people-pleaser that I was, just didn’t talk about it anymore. My folks didn’t either, so I guess or assumed they were happy with my choice. Giving up something that might have worked.
Lie #1: I’m Not A Creative Person
So, the first lie was crafted. I didn’t think to ask where I was going wrong, or where to go to get help. I didn’t think to ask a teacher in high school, I didn’t see the contradiction of creative writing which they criticized and term papers where they didn’t have a problem with at all. I just assumed I wasn’t creative, and there was no hope for me. It was only in attaching myself to someone with creativity that I might get somewhere, but it could only be vicarious or become wealthy on someone else’s efforts, not my own..
And since beliefs are thoughts you think over and over, I started to believe the lie that I wasn’t creative. I spent decades living on vicarious creativity, but it just wasn’t the same as my own creativity, and I knew it.
Lie #2: Nobody wants to hear what I have to say
The first lie grew and another lie accompanied it. It was the idea that no one was interested in what I had to say. My words had no value other than as a way to ridicule or put me down, psyche me out. I figured for decades, even with my husband who was supportive, but was distracted with issues of his own, that if my own family didn’t listen to me, didn’t believe in me, who else would.
I forgot that there were almost 8 billion people in the world, and not all of them were my family. They weren’t carbon copies of the abuse I lived with growing up and as a teen. I just couldn’t see the forest for the trees. In the meantime, I continued to journal, though I took a break for a few years after I got married until somewhere in the ’90’s when I started journaling with MS Word. And it came so easy, and planning what I wanted to do with a potential business, Victory Infopublishing came easy, but when it came to implementing it, that wasn’t so easy. Because it came to the 3rd lie.
Lie #3: No One Believes In Me
I also told myself that no one believed in me. I wasn’t good enough, confident enough, adult enough, grown up enough, but what I failed to see was that I didn’t believe in me either. This is very disempowering, and it did its insidious work. I always felt, that if others didn’t believe in me, than I couldn’t afford to believe in myself. In fact, I was too afraid to believe in me.
I think what hurt the worst was that my best friend, my husband told me he didn’t believe in me and didn’t care what happened to me. It was a shock to me. I just froze. Then someone else who didn’t believe in me. I realize now, he said it in anger, and he didn’t know how to manage his anger either, and I wasn’t aware that I might have ADHD, and my Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria kicked into high gear.
I felt like I was at the side of the road, waiting for somene to show up to show me the right direction which direction. I was just frozen, not for years. For decades. It was the worst feeling in the world, and really isolating. I felt stuck!
Something had to change
I realized slowly that something had to change, but for the longest time, I didn’t know what. I think it was the realization that if no one believed in me, I could and had to believe in myself. I didn’t have a clue on how to start or where to go, but it was a start. It was a stirring in my mind. That I didn’t have to stay at the “side of the road” waiting for “Prince Charming” who obviously wasn’t coming or at least on time. I could pick a direction and start walking. It didn’t matter which direction, any direction would do. It was better than just staying there and waiting for someone else to come along and tell me what to do. So I struck out, to my right, and started walking and haven’t stopped.
Then another thing occured to me. What if I just started writing. For over a decade, I guess I’ve been reading books on how to write books, but had yet to start writing one. But, those same blocks were there. The same freezing, not knowing where to start, the same overwhelm. It was still there. Now what?! What was wrong now?!
Defiance
It wasn’t until I stopped short and started questioned what I was told and started looking for evidence what my folks told me was true, that I started to change. Something happened that I didn’t expect. I couldn’t find any. Sure it was disorganized. I’ve always been disorganized from the time I can remember. It was the symptoms of ADHD, and I didn’t exactly plan my first, and now dead novel. I wrote it “by the seat of my pants”. But I was also just starting out. It was new. I’d never done it before. So of course I was bad at writing. Everyone is at first. My mistake was giving up so readily, that I believed so readily, and so completely.
But it was all a lie. It wasn’t until I wanted to write nonfiction and kept coming up with the same blocks as with fiction, that I first started getting frustrated and angry. They say that nonfiction was easier than fiction, so what was blocking me? So, what was the problem?
I started getting angry. It was quiet, but it was angry. I felt that I had reached the end of my rope as it were. And I knew I could no longer keep going the way I had been going. I could no longer coast. Something had to change. My beliefs had to change. But how?
Questioning and Changing My Beliefs About Writing
Then it hit me. Go over each point my folks made. It wasn’t easy. My parents were very vague, so it didn’t help much, but I do remember some things. I remember writing in a journal. Forget the fact that I couldn’t really read what I wrote, that was a separate but related issue(my story when I was in high school was typed)
I noticed decades later. My folks never said that about my English homework or my term papers that I was assigned in grade school, Jr. High(what is now middle school) or High School. Never, as far as I can remember. Just when I wrote, or tried to write a novel for pleasure and because I wanted to explore it.
And when I spent one semester at Gallaudet, my English professor told me when I told her I felt I had learned a lot, said I hadn’t learned anything. She went on to say that it was natural. That I was a good writer and she wanted me to tutor others. What?! Why didn’t it occur to me at that time that my folks were wrong? Why didn’t I get encouragement in high school.
While I do wish I had taken a creative writing course in high school, what’s done is done. But I can do something about it now. I can start again. I can accept the fact that I am new to it. That I don’t have to be perfect, that others might be interested in what I have to say. What I have to teach? That I can set myself writing assignments and then publish them. They’re not my target audience.
What if I tried, once more? What would happen? I don’t know, but I know that I have to find out, not for anyone else but me. I have to know for me. So I can take my power back. So I can know the truth, and that maybe writing and seeing myself growing as a person as well as a writer. So, this blog is my attempt at writing those assignments that I set for myself. What if I tried again, not with fiction at first but nonfiction? So I said, “Why not?” What’s the worst that could happen?
One of the things I realized over time was that it wasn’t writing that I was afraid of. It was publishing. Because then my work would be out there for the world to see. To judge, to criticize, but I have to start somewhere, so in order to overcome my intimidation and my ADHD brain of perfectionism, of being oversensitive to rejection(they call it Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria), that I should start a blog about my writing. So here I am. But I realized I had to set a few rules and even goals for myself.
Write Something Every Day
This has never been hard. I don’t go a day without writing something in OneNote (my favorite note taking software, no plug here, but I love this!) or Evernote or Scrivener. Or even my Journal or one of them. But my issue is writing things that I publish; that’s not so easy! Then as I said before it’s out there and it might prove my folks right, and then again it wouldn’t. But if I ignore that, put it on the back burner, and write a blog post every day, whether it’s for this blog, or my spiritual blog, Forever Evolving Mind, I should write a blog post every day. It doesn’t matter if it’s right, wrong, perfect or even long, if I write my ideas, and then publish them, it will get me over the fear.
One of the people I follow and look up to; Connie Ragen Green, set a goal for herself to write 100 articles in 100 days. Bear in mind that this was in the dark age of the Internet (2006/2007), and they had article directories back then more than blogs. Maybe I could set up for myself a similar goal. 100 blog posts in 100 days. It’s nerve-wracking, but if I do that and keep it up, then it also starts a habit. And it doesn’t have to be for just this blog. 100 posts in total over the blogs I’m working with. Since it’s real easy for me to get overwhelmed, writing a post a day for several blogs shouldn’t be an issue. I think I can hit it. And it makes me be accountable to not just myself, but you, the reader.
And as I go, it will get easier too So I have that to look forward to that too It will get easier for others as well, and the writing improves, so I am told. So there is only one way to go, and that is up. It’s not just a matter of the writing, but it’s taking more steps in my writing journey. Any movement is better than no movement at all.
Publish Frequently and Consistently
It’s not just enough to write every day, I also need to get into the habit of actually publishing my work so it can be read, and of course get traction. In order to do that, I need to publish what I’m publishing at least once every two weeks. I may not always get this goal down, and some blogs may get more attention and posts published than other published, but I need to publish weekly, bi-weekly, but no less than once a month for the infrequent blogs, but the more I publish, the less frightening it will become… I tell myself.
I do plan to publish 100 posts, though I confess this will be harder than just writing. For instance, I’d like to publish to this blog every two weeks, but I don’t have the confidence right now, but since confidence is built by small actions, write and publish at least once a month, and building to every two weeks. The point I’m making is that make things as easy and with as little overwhelm as possible while still doing something every day.
Conclusion
In conclusion, instead of looking behind and regretting what I haven’t been doing, look forward to what I can do with my writing. Focus on what I can do, and look forward to how I can improve and get my words out there. This will make it easier to write and publish short books, which, right now, are what I can do. I’ve had enough of creeping, and crawling, and being a people-pleaser, and the time is at an end for that, at least as regards writing.
My life is at the point of making small, but consistent improvements every single day. That’s called Kai Zen, and it’s been a value of mine, but I’m just now starting to implement this value and making it more consistent and more a core value. You see, it’s not just enough to have values, you have to be able to implement them.
That’s enough for today. Have an awesome one!
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