Member-only story
Starting a Medium Account is Bringing Up Creative Fears I Thought I’d Worked Through
But is it different this time around?
My online writing journey has been long and it’s only in the past three or four years that I’ve ceased procrastinating, stopped chasing the sparkly side of social media and actually sat my bum on the chair and finished actual writing projects.
I was scared for such a long time. I had no self-belief in my writing ability or my writing ideas. And I would feel like a fraud. I would start a creative project full of enthusiasm and then sharply pull back because a voice had whispered in my ear, “who do you think you are?”
My husband would get so frustrated. “You’re so much better than you think you are,” he’d say. But of course he’d say that, I’d counter in my head. He’s legally obliged to.
I don’t have formal training as a writer. Despite writing for fifteen years I still get confused between a noun, an adjective and other types of grammar that start making me sweat and fill my head with wool. Because of this and because writing was something I discovered I loved in my mid to late-twenties, rather than since I could talk, I felt like a fraud. One day, I told myself, someone will find me out.
