The Trendsetter

Have you ever experienced the fear of writing? Something like when you start to write your fictional piece or memoir you feel that you reveal yourself too much? That you feel everyone will find out about your dark secret in your writing?

In Ralph Keyes book titled The Courage to Write he discusses in depth about how fear prevents the writer from writing. I also believe that fear of writing is one element of the writer’s block that is related to having difficulty when starting to write or when continuing writing.

Fear of writing from a psychoanalytic perspective

I would like to offer the view that fear in a writer, when attempting to write, is due to the strong superego that sublimates their id. You need to have courage to write, and it is exceptionally true when you want to write something as personal as a memoir. Since you will write about the experience you have been through which includes some unpleasant memories of events and people, you have the right to have a fear of committing it to paper. Writers who have a very strong superego will always police their id component and the result is they are unable to write. Their ego is also weak and not able to balance the dominance of the superego against the other two components.

On the other hand, the writer who has the courage to write, is one who has a strong ego component that tries to balance their need to fulfill the id and their superego. That is why they always feel the anxiety and try to write as best as possible in a way that does not upset their superego.

For those who do not care if their writing will hurt someone, they will always have a weak superego and ego and write to fulfill their id component. This type of writer always gets into trouble since they write for pleasure, most of the time their writing lacks credibility.

So how does the writer who cannot write balance all three components of need so they will able to write without fear or anxiety? I think the best way is to learn the technical side of writing fiction or memoir. If you are able to write your fiction in a great style and plot, you are able to present the story in such a way that no one will get hurt. You can use metaphor, analogy, characters and characteristics and setting. You are able to weave the fear into the fiction and write it as it is a fiction. In a memoir, you will definitely need to write it in such a way that you understand why people did what they did and not use your memoir as a way to retaliate or downgraded people who happened to come across your life’s path.

As for those who write just for the sake of fulfilling their id component, the writers’ community and organizations will punish them by not giving their writing credibility.

So, when you write with fear, let the fear help you to write better, but don’t let it cripple your desire to write. For the courage to write is not something that you can get from others, but it comes from within yourself as a strong desire to share your story and hope that somebody can learn from it.