Fear and writing: blame your brain

If you’ve ever grappled with anxiety around writing, you know it can be uniquely painful and bewildering. Maybe you’ve felt like you weren’t good enough, or like trying to create was only going to result in heartbreak and humiliation, or like you were too old and what’s the point. (Insert the script running through your head right here.)

But why? Why are we talking to ourselves like that? What purpose would that serve?

Well. Let’s talk about brains!

There is a primitive part of our brain called the amygdala: almond-sized nubbins buried deep in our brain parts. Seth Godin (see video below) calls this the Lizard Brain, because it’s basically the equivalent of, well, a lizard brain. The lizard brain’s job is to help us survive, so it’s always vigilant for anything that signals food, sex, and (important in our case) danger.

The lizard brain, the amygdala, works great when there’s real trouble. It’s always ready with a fight-or-flight response whenever we might need it. The problem is that the lizard brain doesn’t know the difference between real trouble and emotional trouble. According to the lizard brain, taking risks or standing out of the crowd is a poor idea indeed. Standing out in the crowd means getting eaten. So imagine that poor amygdala, deep in there, fretting whenever you try to create, thinking there’s a panther crouching in the bushes. This is the source of your writing anxiety: fear of panthers.

(Now, if you ask a neuroscientist, they will probably roll their eyes. The lizard-brain theory is simplistic and, truth be told, a little gimmicky. Are there are other parts of the brain also involved in this fear response? Is that all the so-called lizard brain does? This is up for debate. Still, it’s a useful metaphor in thinking about—and discussing—this kind of fear.)

Here’s Seth Godin talking about the lizard brain.

Please note that while Godin is addressing a crowd of entrepreneurs and business types, these concepts apply just as much to any trying to create anything. If you’re pressed for time, he begins talking about the lizard brain about 9 minutes in.

He talks about this fear really kicking in when a project is nearing completion, but unless I have an unusually active amygdala, I’ll have to differ with him on that. My inner lizard is all over me from the beginning of a project straight through to the end. But I’ve always been an overachiever that way.

So now that we know what’s going on, how do we stop the lizard brain from keeping us down? We can’t shut it up completely—it thinks it knows best, and fighting it can be exhausting. What you can do, however, is 1) recognize what’s happening when it kicks in, and 2) give it a little reassurance.

One way to reassure the lizard brain is by breaking down your writing goals into smaller, more manageable chunks. This is a little trick to appease the lizard brain. (We’re not wandering away from the herd completely, amygdala; we’re just venturing a few inches out for some fresh grass. There, there.)

If you’re starting out, I recommend sitting down to write for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch. If you’re writing for fifteen minutes, the stakes are low. We want that, right now. We want low stakes. (And if that fifteen minutes stretches into an hour or longer? We’re certainly not going to question that! Maybe the lizard brain quieted down enough to let you do a big chunk of work, and that’s great.)

If you have a project you’re trying to tackle, break it down. Find the smallest unit of work that won’t freeze you up. Maybe that’s even less than fifteen minutes. Maybe you’ll work more slowly than you hoped, but if you keep at it, you will for sure make progress.

The next thing that helps is routine and consistency: establishing writing as a habit. What could be less dangerous than a habit, after all? A habit tells the lizard brain that this is nothing to worry about, just part of the routine—that you’re confident the panther is never crouching behind a bush on Tuesdays at 9 a.m.

Your inner critic — your lizard, whatever you want to call it — may throw out a few warning shouts, especially as this is still a new habit, but (we hope) not enough to paralyze you.

Recognizing the lizard brain

Now, it would be much easier to overcome the lizard brain if it were obvious about what it was doing. If we literally heard a voice in our head that squeaked “Danger! Step away from the writing because writing scares me!” whenever we sat down to work, why, we’d chuckle, pat our heads, and get to work, while our loved ones called in a team of psychiatric professionals.

No, the lizard brain might be a primitive lil’ nugget, but it’s tricky. It wants to keep you safe, by any means necessary. Instead of fear, you may feel disinterest, anger, or even depression. You may wonder why you want to write when you seem to have no ideas and you get a stabby pain in your temple whenever you try. The lizard brain works in surprisingly subtle ways.

Do any of these sound familiar?

  • Your brain goes blank when you sit down to write.

  • All your ideas suddenly seem tired.

  • Actually, you’re the one who’s tired. Far too tired to write.

  • You realize you have to do some research before you can write. The research will take at least six months.

  • You accidentally delete the story you were writing or forget to save it and your computer crashes.

  • You’re totally planning to write, but first you have to check your email.

  • Before you sit down to write, you’re just going to check social media. For a few hours.

  • You sit down to write and suddenly you’re googling your ex.

  • If you’re writing memoir, you decide you’ll have to wait until everyone you’re writing about is dead.

  • Whenever you want to work, it seems like some huge crisis arises in your life that you’ve got to take care of.

  • You would write but first you need to eat all the Girl Scout cookies in the house, and then you need to be filled with self-loathing, so really you’re quite busy.

  • You’d write but first you need to pick a fight with your spouse or child or mom or cat.

  • You sit down to write and your arm is hurting you, actually it’s your left arm, isn’t that a heart attack?

  • You’re going to start writing, you are, but first you need to take a course or read a book on writing or read ten books and then get an MFA.

Rationally we know these excuses are weak. But when they strike, in that moment they can feel awfully real, painful, and urgent. That’s the lizard brain doing its thing. Once you can identify what’s going on, the illusion gets stripped away. It doesn’t exactly make the discomfort go away; that comes with time, practice, and courage. But you must begin by locating what’s holding you back. Every time you sit down to write, listen for what comes up.

Get to know your lizard brain. How does it manifest itself? Keep a notepad near you while you’re writing, scribble any thoughts or physical sensations that come up. A sudden feeling that you’re too old or too young? Tightness in your chest? An urgent need to image-search moles like the one you’ve been obsessing about?



On starting and shitty first drafts

The only thing that matters is that you write, write, write. It doesn’t have to be good writing. As a matter of fact, almost all first drafts are pretty bad.

Walter Mosley 

It’s my first blog post in this new iteration of my blog! Hello! 

After they received my “Jumpstart Your Writing in Six Steps” workbook, several people asked me, but how do I start, actually?  I love this question. At first I thought the answer was obvious: You start by starting! You sit and put down words. Easy, right? (Hahahahaaaa sorry.) 

But then I thought about it some more, and I think this is actually a couple of concerns lumped together. It’s: 1) How do I tolerate the feeling of starting? and 2) What do I start with? 

So let’s examine these concerns separately. Tolerating the feeling of starting, the sensation of staring at the empty page, is something you have to practice, just like you have to practice writing. In some ways you’re always starting. It gets easier, for sure, but that’s mostly because you’re used to the feeling. You won’t write one day and the next feel like, whew, I’ve started already, this is simple. Nope—you’re starting again the next day. You have to decide again and again to begin. 

The good news is that everyone feels like this, and there is nothing ominous about the feeling. My friend Susan, who’s written numerous award-winning mystery novels, once told me she still feels like a beginner when she starts a new book. I once asked her how to write a novel, and she was like, "You tell me." No one ever truly feels like they know what they're doing. 

Okay, so you know you have to tolerate some discomfort … then what? You write a shitty first draft, as Anne Lamott recommends in her seminal book, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Shitty first drafts are essential, and freeing. The other option is paralysis, which I do not recommend. With shitty first drafts you can let your fingers move around the keyboard or let your pen travel across the paper or babble into a recording device; I don’t know how you work.  

There is a yawning gulf between starting and creating something worth reading, and the bridge is the shitty first draft. It’s the way forward. 

The shitty first draft is also known as the “child’s draft.” You let the inner child who never gets to come out run roughshod all over your pages. Let them say whatever they hell they want. There should be an element of play to this. This is easier said than done, especially when the inner critic is also lurking around the playground, taking notes and shaking their head. You have to let that voice know, firmly and with conviction, that they are not welcome here. No critics in playgrounds. That’s creepy as hell. 

Yes, say the readers, yes but what do you start with? I mean what do I write? 

Obviously I can’t tell you what to write. I will say this: Start small and simple. Don’t sit down to write a novel or a memoir if you’re sitting down for the first time in who knows how many years. Decide to tell a story or share a memory. Tell the story like you’re writing a letter to a beloved friend, someone who’s not going to judge you for putting your apostrophes in the wrong place. Figure out how long you’re going to write: 20 minutes is fine; 5 minutes is good, if you can focus during it. Whatever you can handle. 

If you haven’t finished the story, perfect: Now you have something to return to. Ernest Hemingway famously ended his writing sessions in mid-sentence. That way, he always knew where he was starting when he came back. See? Even Hemingway needed tricks to start. Use whatever works, and let me know how you’re doing.