Overcoming Graphophobia
A guest blog post by Jacob Shirk
Have you ever read something and thought, “Wow, this is so good; I could never write like that.” Or maybe you’ve said to yourself, “I’m just not a good writer; I suck at this.” These are both things that I told myself for a very long time. I’m here to tell you not to make the same mistake that I did!
Throughout high school, I hated writing. I felt like I was awful at it, and it got to the point that I would become physically uncomfortable thinking about writing. I couldn’t bring myself to start writing something, and if I did start writing, what I wrote was awful because I was so focused on how much I hated what I was doing and how bad I thought I was at it.
But when I came to college, I began to realize something: I could no longer afford to feel awful about my writing. I needed to find ways to get better. Here are the three things that I did to fix my problem:
I shifted my mindset
I practiced
I got help and feedback
A mindset shift can be the most important step in improving at something. The biggest problem I knew I needed to address was my feeling that I was never going to be good at writing and that I wasn’t creative enough for it. I began looking at it from the viewpoint of “I’m getting better at writing” rather than “I’m awful at writing.” Every great writer, no matter who they are, had to start somewhere.
The second most important step in getting better at something is practice, practice, and more practice. The way I went about this was sitting down every day, setting a ten minute timer, and writing about a random topic. I had no direction, plan, or anything of the sort. I just spewed thoughts onto the page. As silly as this may sound, this helped me learn how to translate my internal dialogue onto a page for others to see.
Finally, I got help! I brought my writing to everyone, my family, my friends, my roommate, my professors, really anyone with a pair of eyes that could give feedback. You are never alone: there will always be someone who can help you make your writing better. Realizing this made my life so much easier. Having other people’s eyes on a project can mean getting valuable points of view or improvements that you might not have otherwise gotten.
Over the course of my first semester in college, I went from someone who was terrified of writing, to a confident, well-spoken writer. If you feel like maybe you’re awful at writing, and you feel like you can’t get better, all is not lost! Have hope for yourself! Don’t let yourself believe that you can’t get better at something. You might not be the best writer ever, but everyone has something important to share with the world, and writing can be one of the best ways to share it.
Good luck and happy writing!
