WRITING | WORDS | CREATIVITY

What To Do About the Two Fears That Terrify Writers

The blank page, and Impostor’s Syndrome

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“Trust yourself. Trust your story. All you can do is tell it true.”
Holly Ringland, ‘The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart’

The one thing writers fear more than anything else, is a blank page. Another, which affects some of us, is the ‘Impostor Syndrome.’

Despite both these fears and phobias, if we love words, and creating and telling stories, we must write.

We
Must
Write
Every
Day

If we lose a day without writing, for whatever reason, getting back to it a day after, is difficult. Getting back to it a week, or a month later, is even more difficult.

Sometimes, we need a superhuman effort to start the ball rolling again.

Impostor’s Syndrome

The primary thought in a writer’s mind, when she begins writing again, is a sense of almost-panic, and impostor’s syndrome, which is never far away from a writer’s mind.

Impostor’s Syndrome is a term that psychologists Suzanne Imes and Pauline Rose Clance first used in the 1970s.