How Do You Know?
"No one will read this.
Whoever does read this will see what a mediocre writer you are. Not bad, just blah. There are already enough writers in the world, and more than enough blogs and websites, magazines, novels, memoirs, comics, chap books, and journals. There are already enough stories. You don’t need to add your voice to the overwhelming crowd. There is nothing interesting about your life anyway. You haven’t accomplished enough or struggled enough or learned enough to have a compelling story. What will you even be doing? Putting your personal diary up for everyone to read? Talk about being needy and desperate for attention. Talk about weak and whiney and self-indulgent.
You don’t even really want to be a writer. What a silly, unrealistic dream that is. Think how much happier you’d be if you finally put that inner struggle to rest and stopped kidding yourself into thinking you can write. Choose something easier, something you’re actually good at. Be a sandwich eater. Be a complainer. Be a time waster."
These are the thoughts in my head as I sit down to put words on paper. For the last five years (or arguably my entire life) I have thought about writing, read about writing, admired and envied the writing of others, sat down to start a project and sooner or later been stopped by this wall of negatives thoughts, each one another brick lain in front of me until I'm barely peaking over the top.
I recently asked myself a serious question in a humorous way, which was this: “How can you tell the difference between not wanting to do something and being too scared to do something you want to do? They seem samsies to me.” Because we all know how fear can build up brick by brick until it obscures and confuses any genuine desire we have.
I went snowboarding once in high school (stick with me here). My nose ran and I was cold and miserable and after falling on my butt twenty times in wet jeans (because I didn't own snow pants) I decided I’d rather go inside and drink cocoa by the fireplace and never go snowboarding again. Every now and then a good friend or coworker will rave about the sport or invite me on a trip.
“You just don’t know what you’re missing!” they say.
“Once you try it three or four or fifty times, you will love it. You'll be hooked!”
My reaction to this is always the same: “Yeah, maybe it would be fun, but also...meh," and then I don't think about it again until the next imploring person comes along.
I realize that some of this is fear-based. Partly I don't want to snowboard again because I’m scared of face planting in the snow or tumbling down a mountain in a flurry of white powder, or just being really really sore the next day. Yes, I am scared, but it's also because there is no inner voice calling me to strap a wooden board to my feet and fly down a frozen mountain. I don’t read articles about snowboarding or browse snowboarding shops or sit down in the evening alone with my thoughts and feel something inside pulling me towards the top of a snow covered peak.
Not so with writing. It terrifies me almost as much as hurtling down a mountain and yet I cannot shake the urge to read what others have written and share my own stories. I am drawn to it. Every time I think that I have finally talked myself out of it, I am pulled back, not by any outside force or by the nudging of friends, but from within.
The world will not suffer any great loss if I do not add my voice to the swirling crowd, but my little world will suffer immensely. It will be cold and dark and grey behind my brick wall. There might even be rats back there. And while extreme winter sports are not a perfect metaphor, they did help me answer my own question. I already know the difference between the things that matter to me in this world and the ones that hold no sway. We all know, if we're honest and brave. So let's do them. Forget the naysayers, especially yourself.
“Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.”