How to Remove the Fear of Writing (without Surgery)

HOW TO REMOVE THE FEAR OF WRITING

without surgery

1989 by Angela E. White

Sheer boredom coerced me into action.  How could I possibly spend

another dreary lunch hour vicariously escaping into another writer's pen? Solitude was preferable on days such as that one.  Had it been almost two years since the last time I played matchmaker with my thoughts and paper?

Out of desperation, I rummaged through the magazine rack with its wares proclaiming in vivid imagery, "Buy me!".  Stumbling on a writer's magazine whose headline wailed, "What are you waiting for?", I snatched it up, adroitly defending myself because it was less expensive and more productive than passively reading ingredient labels.

The revelation that I carried motivation to the cashier's counter didn't seep into my idle brain.  At least not until after I felt a reminiscent compulsion to do something more with pen and paper than doodle little stick men in fourteen different colors and poses.

The panic that set in would have driven a saner person to distraction. What was I thinking of?  Sure, I wrote inane satires in high school, a few emotional entries in a journal, and kept notes in an appointment book; but weren't those symptoms of an adolescent amateur?  Was I, a mature adult actually contemplating the thought of exposing myself, exhibiting my mind's meanderings?  No, I just thought I needed to exorcise a whim.

All I had to do, I advised myself, was scribble a few lines of gibberish and I would be cured without withdrawal. 

Only one fault with this diagnosis: I couldn't even attempt to record anything. The obsession grew to a feverish pitch.  Instead of tossing and turning in the blackened night, remedial ideas pranced before my shuttered eyes. Memos at work, textbooks at school were edited and refined within the dusty attic of my brain.  These shadows never made it to the two dimensional world of paper. 

When I opted for self treatment, senility crept in and I couldn't begin to remember what ideas I had prescribed.  My mind reflected the blank pages that accused and confirmed my cowardice.

Never one to relinquish control beyond practical standards, I forced myself to regain my composure and my perspective.  So what if it was merely a whim, a dream beyond the scope of a shimmering horizon?  It was still an inbred bodily function necessary to a peaceful existence, a tumor which had to be removed before it destroyed.

So I wrote.  I wrote letters, I resurrected the old diary/journal.  I took notes and doodled on messages.  I pacified the symptoms but I didn't cure the disease.  I couldn't write for mere self-expression and introspection; I had to write for someone else.  I wanted to create an unbiased reaction to the power of my thoughts, my ideas, my emotions.

I've only just begun to cauterize the wound.  No doubt I'll be afraid and rejected, laughed at, and ridiculed.  But for now, I'm in a blissful state of remission.