By E. S. Foster
No matter what type of writer you are, it’s easy to feel anxiety while writing. It might be because you want your work to be perfect, you’re worried that no one will like it, or you believe that it’s not good enough. These negative, anxious thoughts keep you from moving forward with your work. To escape these thoughts, you need to replace them with positive ones. Here are three ways to help your writing anxiety:
Know You Have Time
Writers often experience time anxiety. This is anxiety that arises when you feel that you are running out of time. Often, we believe we should hit certain writing milestones at certain points in our lives, and if we haven’t, then we must be doing something wrong or we’re not good enough to keep going.
The truth is that many writers have started late. Others received plenty of rejections along the way, so their work appeared to the world much later than when they started. But writing isn’t something you’re only allowed to pursue for a set number of years.
Comparing yourself to others only wastes your time. Remember that you have your whole life to write and get better at writing. Eventually, you’ll see some progress, and you’ll recognize the specific path that no other writer is on but you.
Know It Doesn’t Need to Be Perfect
Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the details. Writers want their work to be perfect and they get discouraged when it’s not. They slip into the anxious feeling that they’re not good enough. However, your draft doesn’t need to be perfect from the beginning.
The edits will come later. Right now, just focus on your draft and get it down on paper. You have plenty of time to work out the details when you edit. That’s why you need to trust the writing process. Anxiety about being perfect only gets in the way.
Know You Can Make Mistakes
This goes along with being a perfectionist, but it also applies to being a writer in general. Sometimes writers believe that everything will fall apart if they make mistakes in their writing. They start questioning their abilities when they write. They ask, “Did I do this right? Is that how you write this?” I’m definitely one of them!
But making mistakes is part of growing as a writer. One misstep doesn’t mean that you’re now disqualified from reaching your writing goals. It’s also not a reflection of you as a person.
You’re learning a craft, and you’re bound to make mistakes along the way. If you think about it, all writers, even the best ones, started out as writers who had no idea what they were doing.
So if you feel anxious when writing, stop and take a step back. Ask yourself why you might feel this way. Then remind yourself that you’ll reach your goal in time, and you’ll get better along the way.
Happy writing!
About The Author
E.S. Foster is a fiction writer and graduate student at the University of Cambridge. She is also the creator of the E. S. Foster blog. Her work has appeared in over twenty literary journals, including Aurora Journal, Sour Cherry Mag, and Paragraph Planet. Her chapbooks have been published by Yavanika Press (2022) and Ghost City Press (2023). You can find more of her articles here.
Note: 3 Ways To Help Your Writing Anxiety is a guest post.
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