34 | The Writer • March 2020
+ Read the memoirs of those who did or are doing what
you want to do.
+ Take individuals whose career or accomplishments you
admire to lunch or interview them for an article. Ask
them how they became what they are.5
PROBLEM: You have a fear of writing what you
most need to write.
You don’t want to face it. You are afraid of what
people will think of you. You worry about the legality (or
the ethics) of writing about other people. Richard Bach
wrote, “We teach best what we most need to learn.” By the
same token, we write what we most need to read. Writer
Mridu Khullar Relph says that writing is most difficult when
we resist saying the things we know we must say, resist
exploring the emotions we want to explore, or resist feeling
the pain that will come when we tell our truths. Emotional
resistance creates creative resistance.
WHAT TO DO: Write first, worry later. You cannot simul-
taneously write freely and hold back, so make the following
pact with yourself: You will write what needs to be written,
feeling all the feels that need to be felt, and only after you
have done that will you begin to think about how (or if ) you
want to make your story public. You simply must separate
the creative process from the concern about outcomes and
trust that when it’s time to consider outcomes, there will be
all manner of mentors and people who have been where you
are to guide the way.
- Sometimes it’s helpful or even necessary to get emotional
support – from compassionate family members, friends,
and, yes, even a therapist – as you write about painful
things. (Be certain that there is not a conflict of interest –
i.e. that you’re not asking the very people you’re writing
about to support you).
6
PROBLEM: You are depressed.
Sometimes we are truly suffering from clinical, diag-
nosable depression, which makes writing feel like
dragging a tractor out of a mudslide with your bare hands.
When I was younger and suffering from depression, I was
told (and believed) that depression led to better art. I bought
into this idea until the day I looked around and realized that
although I had produced filing cabinets full of writing, noth-
ing I’d written held together. There wasn’t a complete story or
essay in sight, nothing that I could submit to anywhere.
WHAT TO DO: Getting treatment for depression will not
make you less profound, and it will make you more pro-
ductive. Often we buy into the idea that our depression
makes us profound because we need to believe our pain is
worth something.
+ If you’ve been depressed longer than a few
weeks, seek therapy. Your writing will thank
you.7
PROBLEM: You are a perfectionist,
stuck in revision hell.
You can’t move forward because you are
too busy “perfecting” your work. There’s a differ-
ence between revising and tinkering. Revision
addresses the overall structure and/or organiza-
tion of your piece, as well as the mechanics, lan-
guage choices, narrative arc, and point of view.
Tinkering is when you play with a word or sen-
tence here or there, but the overall effect on the
piece is minimal. It is possible to get stuck in both
revising AND tinkering, the result being that you
never show it to anyone or submit it because you
are never “finished.”WHAT TO DO: Perfectionism is fear masquerad-
ing as commitment to craft. It’s time to acknowl-
edge the fear. Know you join a long, celebrated
list of people who have the same fear – that their
work is never good enough – and then set a goal
for submission that is not too far in the future.
Tell your plan to a friend or your writers group
and ask them to hold you accountable.
+ Realize that in a dangerous world, fear seeks
to protect us, but there is little true danger in
the writing world save for the pain of rejec-
tion. The sooner you accept that you’re going
to receive some, the sooner you can get a start
on submitting.
+ Let your fear speak. Let it write you a letter.
Actually sit down and pen it to yourself in its
voice. Then read the letter with open-minded
and openhearted affection. Let your fear know
you hear it. You can’t kill your fear, but you can
acknowledge it’s there and move forward any-
way. This is the definition of courage.
+ My husband’s high school had a saying painted
on the wall: “Avoid failure. Never try.” Is this
really what you want?8
PROBLEM: You are on the
wrong path.
It is possible to choose unwisely for our-
selves, or to choose a path that is merely adjacent
to where we want to be. Some people who really
want to be writers find themselves “next door” as
teachers or editors. Some who deeply want to
write short stories find themselves working as