Writing Tips
Why You Soo Afraid to Write?
If you are new to writing, probably you will face this problem
The feeling of fear by the judgment of others always succeed to make people stop to write. The fear is freezing the brain and make it stop to work. If you feel this then you are not alone, most people have this problem including me when they start to write.
When I start to write, there is much doubt inside myself, that doubt comes from fear of being judge by the reader. Here is some of question or statement that can make you stop to write.
- I’m not good enough to write
- I don’t know the best way to write
- Does what I write even important to the reader?
- How if people think about what I write a bad article?
- How if people don’t want to read my article? It is useless to write, isn’t it?
- I’m not expert about the topic that I want to write
- Many people have been written the same topic
- and the list goes on
Maybe you will not have the same question or statement inside your head, but generally, you would have the same kind of question or statement that stop you to continue your writing. What you do to yourself is basically, you judge yourself by your own projection to others. This happened because your nervous system that responsible for handling threat activated when you feel anxious.
In the animal kingdom, animal response to the threat is freeze or playing dead. Freeze and playing dead is one of the ways in the animal kingdom to hide from a predator. We share the same kind brain in the limbic system like the animal, so this is what makes us hard to write when we feel there is a threat to our writing.
When you feel the threat, your brain that called the neo-cortex or the modern brain is hijacked by your limbic system. You are in the condition of fight or run to save yourself from the predator. And guess what, who is the predator? You know the answer, the reader is the predator.
Don’t think your reader as the predator that will kill yourself image, think they’re your best friend that you want to share a story when you write
So, the most effective way to remove the fear of judgment by the reader is to change the way you think about your reader. Think your reader as your best friend that you want to share a story. When you have a best friend, you let yourself talk to a foolish thing and you still feel safe. And that makes the story is interesting to listen. So, when you write, act as you talk to your best friend and let yourself to be a fool in the process of writing.
Let yourself to be fool when you start something new
Writing, like other skill, it needs time to develop. In the process of developing this skill, you need to let yourself to be a fool. It’s okay to make a mistake, you need to give yourself a chance to make a mistake. Make a mistake as much as you can, but always evaluate yourself after that. Mistake or failure is like a currency, when you have enough of it then you can buy the skill that you want. If you want to know more about how to make failure or mistake as a currency you can read my article about it.
Every skill need time to master, every person has different effort and time to master thing. But generally speaking, like Malcolm Gladwell said you need at least 10,000 hours to become expert of it.
if you practice one skill for 10,000 hours, you’ll have a good chance at becoming an expert at it — Malcolm Gladwell
So, if you want to master the skill of a writer, you need to write as much as you can, you need to post as much article as you can, just make the repetition, lets yourself to befool, and enjoy your time until it reaches 10,000 hours of trials. if you do this, I believe you will be an expert in writing without you realize it.
Okay, that’s for today, I hope you enjoy your time reading this article, have a nice day.
