I am a writer with a fear of writing.
You see the problem here.
I have sat on this Substack for months and months. Not an unusual thing for me at all: time moves differently for me. I could have sworn it’s only been a few months, but it’s been many more. The time in-between has been full of intentions that never come to fruition - because of ADHD symptoms, because of waiting for “the right time”, and because of fear.
One of the scariest things I’ve known is a blank page. I see it as intimidating. I see it as demanding, expecting of something beautiful amazing perfect, and nothing else is good enough.
So I don’t start, I don’t write, for fear of humiliating myself.
I do not believe in myself, and it shows.
This year I started to dabble in standup comedy and entertaining. I’ve only been able to do a few gigs, but I’ve learned my main failing is I just don’t think I can do it, despite the fact I absolutely can. It’s like my brain and body pulls me away from potential just in case I fuck it up.
In the words of Dylan Moran: “It’s POTENTIAL! Leave it!”
The same is true regarding music. A huge part of me knows I’m good enough to create half decent music, but as soon as I hit a record button all resolve pisses out like closing time at a Wetherspoons. There could be a million songs I write that are amazing, but one crappy recording or one poor lyric line and my brain mutters “lol you’re useless”. So why risk it? Why humiliate myself?
And if any part of the process is fucked up by anyone else - like, for example, Unbound stealing all my backer’s money at the start of this year then leaving me in the shit with a finished book and two years’ of work down the drain - I take that failing as mine. Just mentioning Unbound makes me feel guilty. And I DO need to do a video about that or write a post on here, but the fear is insane; because here’s the other thing.
On the internet, it does not matter how much solid proof you give. I could screenshot each of my emails with Unbound, transcribe them, give a timeline, and there will STILL be certain people adamant that I and the hundreds of other authors fucked over by them are at fault.
(But fuck it, I’m going to tell my Unbound story on here shortly. And I’ll do a video. It’s like a festering tumour in my mind that needs to come out.)
In any case.
As is often the case, the fear comes from my childhood.
I was brought up in two households, neither of which I felt safe in. In one household I had been molested, and in the other my newly-separated Dad was so stressed and angry all the time from being on the brink of poverty I walked on eggshells. And he really didn’t like me doing things like reading or drawing because he considered such things antisocial, or not really work.
I used to keep my writing and reading till bedtime, peering at scribbles on paper from my pillow while the cat purred serenely next to me.
My primary school was run by a series of middle-aged witches. Those of us who couldn’t pull together our times tables were put in the corner for being “silly” or “childish”. One teacher, Mrs P, seemed to enjoy making the neurodivergent miserable, telling one autistic kid he was such a baby he needed nappies, and letting me sit in turmoil during art lessons because I didn’t have a black pen and she had instructed us that he HAD to outline our work in black. I remember her looking over at me pleased with herself, until I finally burst into tears and she pulled me into her lap and cooed “you should have said you didn’t have a black pen rather be silly.”
I grew up thinking that anything less than perfect was not good enough. My mum would always say “that’s good, Sar” when I showed her my drawings or writing. But she never said “that’s perfect, Sar” and for some reason that translated in my head as rubbish.
My Dad, who had not read a book since he was twelve, tried very hard to concentrate long enough to read one of my stories. If he was in a bad mood he would refuse to read them at all, giving me an “oh, good” when I told him I’d got 9/10 in class.
But the absolute root of it all has to be that my mother chose a man over her own child. Surely that meant I wasn’t good enough. And no amount of anything I could do would make me good enough - I mostly got As at school, but Mum would point out the D I got in maths.
I think when we become adults, we rework the tapestry of our childhood into something that it wasn’t. For me, my memories that stick out are mostly negative because the emotional responses at the time was so severe, and as such I look back on that time with sadness.
There must have been happy moments and moments when I felt safe.
The only memory I have of feeling like I was enough for the adults around me was when, aged six and around the time my parents were separating, Mum and Dad sat on either side of me on a bench outside of my school while I pretended to have an asthma attack. Not because I didn’t have asthma - I did, it was a mild allergic reaction to our cats - but because I realised that making them worried about me was when they really showed me love. Those concered, hooded eyes, the way my dads arms felt so warm and Mum’s long-nailed fingers felt so cold.
In adulthood, my desperate search for validation is fruitless. I will never been good enough for myself.
This year, I am trying to come to terms with that.
As a writer, I will always make mistakes. I will always find someone who doesnt like my style, or thinks I’m crap. The last year how shown me the reality is that every single writer has the same worries and same experiences; especially online.
I can’t keep going over every single thing I put online, anxiously searching for spelling errors and grammar mistakes. I don’t have an editor, I only have me. And if people want to point fingers at one spelling error and denounce me as some kind of moron, that’s on them. I refuse to be so critical of myself any more, and allow myself to make mistakes - because that’s how you learn and grow.
So here I am, picking myself up and starting again. And trying. And scared. But here we go.
Louis x