Thoughts on "The Courage to Write"

Currently, one of my favorite books on writing is The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear by Ralph Keyes, an author and long-time writing teacher.

Writers face fears of writing almost daily. If you've attended college, you, like me, felt the sting of procrastination piercing you as you glared at an empty Microsoft Word document. You're about to write a paper about the American Revolution, David Hume, The Yellow Wallpaper, the book of Job, or something else entirely.

The key word is "about to write." You don't actually get started. Just one more glance at your class notes, an old book's appendices, or your Facebook feed. "Just give me one more minute!" I said. Or I’m wondering if I shouldn’t join the Mario Kart gaming session the next room over.

And even then, at least you can rely on writers, researchers, philosophers, professors, teachers, traveling salesmen, Italian poets, Shakespeare, or whomever did the hard work before you began writing about them.

Whatever kind of writer you are, Keyes makes clear that you're not alone in feeling apprehension about writing. From E.B. White (author of Charlotte's Web) and Eugene O'Neill to Joan Didion and William Faulkner (yep, Faulkner thought he could do better than he did), writers have to conquer fear.

The thing is, Faulkner wasn't dismayed by an inability to write better stories. "... I am convinced that I would do it better, which is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps on working, trying again." (pg. 27)

I'm siding with Faulkner here. Listing all the ways I could have improved a piece of writing, whether a college paper, short story, nonfiction article, or whatever, can occupy a lot of my time even after I'd completed that piece of writing. But that's the force that keeps me working. You might never achieve perfection, but you're forever striving for perfection even if it’s an unattainable ideal.

Let's talk more about fear, since if writing were that easy, we could start doing it in a heartbeat. According to Keyes, a lot of our fear stems from what others will think of us, as anyone who has experienced a tough teacher or mentor can attest. We want to be "psychologically safe", as Keyes puts it, but of course this attitude is what needs conquering in order to put words to paper (or digital screen).

A preliminary step might just be to forgive yourself (pg. 66). Don’t feel bad for having these fears. Or better yet, write about them. Work through them. You might be surprised what you found out.

Personally, I've learned to get over my past mistakes and commit to a realistic goal. Write 100-200 words first, then write 250-500, then 750-1000, and so on. And remember, writing is not editing. Your goal is to put words together. Editing, refining, and reforming those words will come later.

I'll end on one of my favorite quotes from Keyes: "Bad writers can usually do better; they simply prefer not to." (pg. 103) I’ve been a bad writer in the past and in the present, and you’ve been a bad one, too.

With writing, just do it. Nike taught us that when we were youngins (okay, at least when I was a youngin'). And Nike is still teaching it. So just absorb the lesson and get to work.