Four Fears, Talent & Time - #001 - Ridicule

The 6 things that stop people writing

Part #001: Fear of Ridicule

Over the last few years, I have seen so many common themes that express themselves as writer’s block – and experienced them myself.

They are as follows:

• Fear of ridicule
• Fear of failure
• Fear of the unknown
• Fear of success
• Lack of time
• Lack of talent

- these are of course all perceptions and I normally get rid of them in a single 1-2-1 session. I’ve also had people that have read just three chapters of my new book Blocks and then become to busy writing to finish the book off – result !!

In this short blog series, I’ll explain a little about why and how these issues manifest and give some simple tips to get around them.

The Fear of Ridicule

This is really common. The best way to avoid being ridiculed for your writing is not to write anything at all. Our unconscious minds protect us from harm by inventing loads of ways for us to avoid being ridiculed.

Signs that this is happening in your life are:

• Procrastination
• Being a busy fool
• Loads of half written manuscripts, chapters or ideas for blogs

A classic trigger for this might be a teacher marking down an essay you wrote at school.

Putting Your Head Above the Parapet

The simple way around this is to start writing and ‘publishing’  small bits of work and discovering that you don’t get shot down in flames.

The good news is there are loads of really good and supportive places online to do this – such as the Six Sentences Social Network where you tell a story in just, well, Six Sentences.

You can of course use your own blog or even Twitter a story out 140 characters at a time.

Local writers groups are also a good place to find your feet. There are also loads of short story and poetry competitions out there – Writing Magazine for example has loads

http://www.writersnews.co.uk/competitions/wmcomp07.asp

For deep trauma or entrenched fears, a session with me or the fabulous Penny Waite will normally do the trick too …

See this post for how Penny uses EFT to tackle writer’s block …

Next in this series – tackling the Fear of Failure …