It Can Be Hard to Handle the Fears and Doubts When It Comes to Writing
However, it doesn’t have to be
There are most days when I find it hard to write. I’ve been in a writing rut for the past two weeks. Am I dealing with passion burnout, my insecurities, or my doubts that I’m not good enough?
Every time I try to submit an application to writing jobs or submit pitches for freelancing work, the fears and doubts creep in and say, “Are you even good enough?” or “Are you even qualified for handling the tasks at hand?”
These two thoughts cripple me, not even to try to submit for fear of rejection or to get an interview thinking I have the job but find out they’ve chosen a more qualified candidate. I have handled rejection, but the fears and doubts seem more intense.
It’s hard when you’ve tried your best and written a great piece only to have it turned down. If anything, the rejections should keep me motivated to keep trying and learning more about being an efficient writer. For me, however, it has sent me to passion burnout.
What is passion burnout? According to this article on Theshineapp.com, “Passion burnout is when that quote — ‘do what you love…’ — goes totally haywire, and you end up dreading the thing that you fell in love with because of mental and physical exhaustion.”
In the pursuit of being such a great writer, I put pressure upon myself to keep going and going until I couldn’t. This tactic can cause anxiety and depression, and already having both illnesses, I wasn’t helping by making it worse. The fear once again took over about not making it and if I ever will.
I had my aim and motives all wrong.
I had to remember why I fell in love with writing. In the beginning, I didn’t write for an audience or to become a famous writer. Instead, I wrote because I loved expressing how I feel and to help others. Whether or not I made it as a writer didn’t matter at the time. So I wrote without fears and doubts and when those feelings did come, I’d, you guessed it, wrote about it.
I’m taking breaks from long writing projects to maintain my mental health and I’m starting to feel much better about handling my fears. Rejection is hard, but it shouldn’t stop you or me from doing what we love.
Getting over your fears is a part of the human experience and I won’t let it define me as a writer. Whether I get published or not or get full-time employment as a writer doesn’t matter anymore. What truly matters is that I’m enjoying the writing process and that I feel okay about it.
It Can Be Hard to Handle the Fears and Doubts When It Comes to Writing was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
