Why Writing Takes Courage

Making your writing public can be nerve-wracking, but the feeling is justified.

The fear

I, like you, feel a qualm of anxiety every time I go to make a piece of writing public. I wanted to explore this feeling, learn what underlies that fear, and determine whether or not it’s warranted. What I’ve realized is that to be a writer takes a tremendous amount of courage.

The paper confessional

A writer implicates themselves by pointing to realities that they could only be aware of by having experienced them or dwelt on them. To write about envy, infidelity, addiction, fear, failure, love, or any number of the other messy things that make up life as we know it, is invariably to confess to the world that you have experienced such things and how. Writing is public confession.

When you first meet a person, there is an understanding that a certain level of comfort must develop between the two of you before any real intimacy can be had, and so one’s personal feelings and experiences are tucked away for a time. Yet, these thoughts and sentiments are displayed for all the world in our writing — and would be on billboards if we were afforded the opportunity. It takes courage to be this vulnerable.

Even when dealing with the most sterile subjects, the impressionability of words, which offers a million ways to say a single thing, captures the slightest attendant sentiment, so that an author’s opinion can never truly be hidden, for the selection of one adjective over another, the particularly inspired metaphor, the unusually incisive insight, or simply one word too many, communicates an appreciation of one line of thinking over another. It is impossible to conceal passion in writing.

Flying blind

Writing intensifies the social realities we all face just by participating in society: never getting to see yourself through the eyes of others, guessing at the veracity of your self-assessments, and always wondering if you’re sufficiently adequate and well-received. The words that criticize always seem so much more credible than those that compliment.

I’ve joked with friends that I’d believe myself to be an excellent writer only if I won a Pulitzer, but, truthfully, if that impossibility ever became reality, I think I’d be more likely to question the merit of the bestowal. I’ve often wished for such a horrid thing as a devil on my back constantly pointing out everything wrong in my writing, as it would be preferable to the inescapable ignorance.

There is a far-sightedness inherent in human nature, so that all that is closest to us is blurred. We can never be unbiased judges of our competence, intelligence, social reception, etc. Anyone who has ever watched one of those televised singing competitions has seen just how self-deluded a person can be, how they can believe themselves the best singer in the world, when all the world sees just how talentless they are. Any artist with open eyes, including writers, must always consider this to possibly be the case for themselves, for there are no objective measures of skill when it comes to pursuits such as these.

Opening the vault

Every writer first feels the draw to put pen to paper as a sort of refuge. The blank, silent page and the obedient pen accept our thoughts without judgment and retain them faithfully. To make one’s work public is to let every stranger with a passing curiosity access to that most sacred place.

Packaging personhood

The only thing an author has to give are the products of their private life. The thoughts and emotions that consume us, the experiences that change us, and everything else concealed in that fortress of the mind is spilled out onto a page for general consumption. What is more representative of who you are as a person than these things?

Words are vessels that writers fill with their thoughts, memories, and emotions, and ship off to whomever will have them. An author bottles their doubts, boxes their delights, and packages their pain, and then sells them like a shopkeeper. We are peddlers of our own personhood.

A carpenter, cleaner, or lawyer can claim without a care that they provide the best service, just as many a salesman can boast freely about the quality of their product. But the world will never abide a writer making claims of their own greatness: It is too central to who one is. To say “I am a masterful writer” is far too egotistical a claim; it is akin to saying, “I am amazingly beautiful” or “I am incredibly smart” — these things strike too close to the core of our being. It is as if to say, “I am an admirable person.” This exemplifies just how personal a written work is.

Moreover, there is a vulnerability in effort, in demonstrating one’s capability; writing is by no means an exception to this. To the burden of baring one’s soul, we add the difficulty that it must also be done skillfully. A sentence containing a heartfelt sentiment and a profound observation is rendered powerless by a conspicuous typo.

The difficulty of communication

There are a great many challenges involved in the skill of writing. There are thousands of words to be memorized, each with a variety of definitions and connotations; there is granular detail in the rules of grammar, as finely honed as would be expected for any craft as essential and ancient as writing; and there are multifarious, inscrutable forms of eloquence and style; but the most difficult part of writing is not to say a thing exactly right but to predict exactly how it is most likely to be read.

Good writing is an unusually empathetic exercise. One must master and organize their own thoughts to write well, but one must also peer into the unknowable mind of their reader. This is the difficulty of communication, and it is central to the art of writing.

The reach of words

Silent writing echos longer and carries farther than the loudest shout. A sentence can make its way around the world. A configuration of words can be reproduced by a million tongues. The words one writes today might be read for millennia to follow, and this daunting reality is something that writers not only face but that they pray for. There is an intrepid bravery in being a writer that none but those who have this calling can understand.

A commitment to permanence

To write is to make a record of one’s sentiments. There is nowhere to hide in writing. A written work is unchanging and unresponsive. What it says is what it says until the end of time. We may change, but what we’ve written is set in stone. Every word we make public is as much an indelible mark on our reputation as a tattoo is upon the skin.

The impossibility of originality

There is a constantly present feeling that every word I write has been said before, and that I am less a person than an echo. Billions of people produce words everyday. Billions of people produced words before I ever formed my first. A sort of unwitting plagiarism is not the exception when writing but the rule.

A writer must grapple directly with the redundancy of humanity. Those that take up this calling are no more reiterations and repetitions of their predecessors than those in any other field, but because the works of those who came before us remain so active and well-preserved, they contend with us for attention throughout our lives.

Just the other day I wrote that, “There is no skill in navigating calm waters.” Two days later I stumbled across a quote of FDR’s: “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.” He said this not only before I was born but before either of my parents were born. My attempt at originality was precluded long before I drew my first breath. And when people read this post, they will to a person highlight the former President’s words over my own. And why shouldn’t they? Who am I compared to him? Only writers are truly haunted by ghosts of the past.

The overwhelming odds

Writing is such an essential skill that it is practiced by everyone. There is scarcely a comparable profession wherein one is expected to outperform every modern person. The craftsmen need only compete with the fellows in their field, and the retailers each have a product with a niche. There is a democracy to writing that doesn’t exist for other skills. Anyone can write, and anyone can make it public. With all the world competing to be heard, how will your voice rise above the clamor? To be a successful writer is among the most audacious of dreams.

Conclusion

Is it any wonder that the word “masochism” is named after a novelist, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch? The next time you get that thrill of anxiety when making your work public, remember this: That feeling is warranted. You have just done an incredibly brave thing.

Come what may, you took a bold leap.

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