Hi Rachel.
Not fear, as in I hate the dark. although I do hate the dark, but I'm afraid what I write will be bad or I won't be able to finish it. So I don't start. Even though I know first drafts are supposed to be shitty, and shit makes great fertilizer, I don't start. Or I didn't.
I've called myself a writer all my life. I haven't been writing. Not really. Not until last summer.
I majored in creative writing and besides assignments, I did not write with any ritual or habit. Not until my senior thesis (which I slayed, if I do say so myself).
I couldn't write for most of elementary school, and couldn't rope my mom into writing down my little stories whenever I wanted her to, so I wasn't really getting my creativity out of my brain. And once I could write, I was so afraid of spelling things wrong and being unable to reread it later that I didn't write much that wasn't required for school. Dyslexia is such a gift *sarcasm*.
In middle school, I began writing poetry during the worship portion of youth group. I started reading these poems, in their first draft form, during the ending announcements and goodbyes. After awhile (I can't recall how long), the youth pastor asked me to ruminate and edit a poem before sharing.
And that was the bolting of the lock to the very small door my writing had been clawing its way out from. I had built up the courage to write AND share and it wasn't good enough. I didn't stop writing during worship, but I stopped sharing. This pastor was right, I was reading my shitty first drafts consistently and only rarely were they really good. But I was too afraid and insecure and too lost to try and edit. I had no idea how to edit. When I stopped attending that youth group (around 16, when the pastor warned me about the dangers of being dependent on my first boyfriend, which is such a load of crap if you know anything about me), my poetry tapered off.
I did have writing classes from time to time, and occasionally I would be struck with what I called the Holy Spirit and jot down a few lines. Yet I chose the colleges I applied to for their writing programs. And although I told everyone I wanted to major in English or education, I was lying. I wanted to be a writer and I didn't know how to do that, even though lots of people my age were writing and editing with abandon. I knew college was my chance to learn.
So I went to college. And I learned more about sentence structure, stuff I memorized but didn't actually know (managing a learning disorder is mostly masquerade). I was forced to write assignments to earn the grades I needed to maintain my scholarships. I was forced to participate in workshops, where 15 or so other people edit and respond to my work while I sit in a chair in complete silence (they aren't as bad as that makes it sound). This forced me into some semblance of a routine. I wasn't writing during school breaks but I was writing more and every little bit counts!
I started building up courage. Real courage, not fear-based "I believe the Holy Spirit wants me to share this poem so I HAVE to share it" courage. In no particular order, I left my religion. I started masturbating. I let myself look in mirrors. I made friends in my writing classes that would hang out and write with me, really I found my community and was able to bloom into a writer, the term I'd been using practically all my life.
And then junior year ended and I had to prepare for thesis: an eighty page manuscript. To graduate, I had to fucking write this. I had no other options. So I wrote it. I ended up writing 154 pages. The best stuff I wrote was in the last two months before the due date but the core of it was written over the summer and fall 2016, and edited and hated and edited and kind of liked and compiled into a single document and then it was an actual singular narrative?? That I loved a lot. I made it with my hands and brain and love and responses from friends and my thesis adviser. Shout out to Belle* who close-edited the sentence structure of every single sentence and corrected a bunch of words that needed to be hyphenated and didn't need to be hyphenated. I am not deserving of her perfection and love. I don't think anyone is, though.
And now I've not written anything (besides a few blog posts) in two months. It's been a beautiful rest- not a terrifying "I will never write again!" season. I'm not afraid of this separation. I need the rest. For one day I will return to my thesis, massively revamp and expand it, and work on getting it published.
But my point in writing this is I have always been a writer, even when I wasn't writing. I read a few shamey quotes on being a writer, one was something about if you aren't writing, you're a waiter. How callous is that? While writing my novella, weeks would go by without me writing or editing anything. Weeks. And those weeks were not wasted. It was time to ruminate and think and ask questions and pay attention to my world and ask my mom how old I was when we painted my room. It was useful waiting time. Even if some of it was wasted on bingeing Netflix, shaming myself for "wasting" time solves nothing but cements the fear. SO fuck that.
Write. Or don't write. But try not to shit on yourself for not writing if you want to be a writer. We have enough fear and shame, don't add to it. Also, read Anne Lamott's work. She's badass.
Be kind to yourself. Have a list of ideas, or a stack of index cards with observations. Go on lots of walks. Read Daily Rituals, create a ritual for yourself (hopefully one with fewer vices than the creators in Daily Rituals uses...). But most importantly, forgive yourself when you don't follow through with your ritual.