By Judy Clement Wall I recently read Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, The Chronology of Water, a book I absolutely loved for its determination to look squarely at the wreckage of a truly broken heart and not make it pretty or poetic or simple. Here is the opening sentence: The day my daughter was stillborn, after I…
Category Archives: fear of writing
What I Would Write If I Wasn’t Afraid
By Jennifer Garam Once in a while I see a post on another writer’s blog that I just have to have. I was reading this post over on One Writeous Chick and it felt so perfect for our FoW readers, I asked my friend Jen if I could republish it here. She was happy to…
Survey: What is the nature of your fear of writing beast?
From our survey choices below, please copy and paste as many points as applicable into the Comments section of this post. Feel free to elaborate on your choice(s). If we haven’t pin-pointed your particular brand of writer’s block or fear of writing, please add to our list with your specific predicament. Thank you for participating!…
Thrilling First Results of the “Travel Writer Crash Course”
THE FIRST WRITER who read the Travel Writer Crash Course here on the Fear of Writing blog (which takes about 10 minutes to read) did not think she was qualified to participate in the program—but she took the risk of applying and has had a wonderful experience so far. Here is the story behind the…
Writing for Myself. And for Always.
By guest blogger Jenn Martin-Ilo I RECENTLY LOST my job because my company decided to outsource some of its payroll HR duties. Since I’ve been home, I have done a lot of thinking: What else can you do with freedom? (Okay, so I don’t really have much freedom since I have a six-month-old baby ….
Writing and Trust
By Milli Thornton Do you remember the first time you connected with the joys of writing? For me, it was age 13 and a story assignment from our English teacher. I was burrowed into a warm and glorious cocoon, inhabiting a special, exciting world only I had the power to create. After I emerged, I…
Cheap Therapy
By Milli Thornton Sometimes, even when I’m completely eager to work on my current story, I have fear of starting a new writing session. There’s that fear I won’t know where to go next with my story. Or only slightly less intimidating (if I have an outline to work with), that I won’t know how…
Fear: It’s a Personal Thing
By George Angus I spend a lot of time on Twitter. I imagine it’s because of the type of folks I follow, but I see a lot of quotes tweeted that have to do with fear. Specifically a lot of these quotes have to do with conquering fear, having courage, blah, blah, blah. They don’t…
Owning Your Fear
By George Angus I used to have this thing about ladders. Hated them. Oh, not the physical object so much, it was more the act of using the darned things. Climbing a ladder made me breathe fast and made my legs quiver. In short, I was afraid of heights. As far as I can remember,…
The Price of Dreams
By Marcus Hades Sometimes, in order to live your dreams, you may have to first live through your nightmares. When I was in school, I lacked even a tiny bit of the much hyped IQ when it came to language, especially English. I was a (much) below average student with (very) low grasping powers. I…
