A Terrible Mind Tells It Like It Is

I've been reading Chuck Wendig's blog, Terrible Minds, for some years now. He's a great blogger and writer, and he writes a lot of writerly tip lists that get shared from one end of the internet to the other because they are so good. He's really the only writer who has repeatedly made me feel like kicking my own ass into doing something, and he's done it again with his new 25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now).

I've struggled with fear... for a very long time. Fear of rejection by my peers, fear of rejection from agents or publishers, fear of rejection from my own self - fear of never believing that anything I write is good enough. But worse, especially lately, has been my laziness. I'm just not writing. It's sort of killing me.

Here's what Chuck says in that blog post about fear and laziness, my two biggest enemies:

Fear will kill you dead. You’ve nothing to be afraid of that a little preparation and pragmatism cannot kill. Everybody who wanted to be a writer and didn’t become one failed based on one of two critical reasons: one, they were lazy, or two, they were afraid. Let’s take for granted you’re not lazy. That means you’re afraid. Fear is nonsense. What do you think is going to happen? You’re going to be eaten by tigers? Life will afford you lots of reasons to be afraid: bees, kidnappers, terrorism, being chewed apart by an escalator, Republicans, Snooki. But being a writer is nothing worthy of fear. It’s worthy of praise. And triumph. And fireworks. And shotguns. And a box of wine. So shove fear aside — let fear be gnawed upon by escalators and tigers. Step up to the plate. Let this be your year.