Eight years ago I started a blog. Blogs were fairly new so I said “what the heck, I could probably create a popular blog.” Like many people out there, I was really into in for the first week but eventually went months went by and I didn’t make any updates and finally the blog dissolved in less than a year.
In order prevent the same thing from happening again, I asked myself “what makes me qualified to be a writer?” In typical pessimistic fashion, I ended up answering the question of “what makes me unqualified to be a writer.”
In the book Start, author Jon Acuff talks about our voices of fear that tell us we can’t do certain things. Acuff encourages his readers to write down their voices of fear because acknowledging them can make them shrink and not seem as imposing.
So I’ve decided to write down the three main voices of fear that kept creeping into my head anytime I asked “what makes me qualified to be a writer?”
Voices of fear:
- I am not a grate speller and my vocabulary is limited
- I never come up with clever and witty sayings, such as “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” – Mark Twain
- There are too many better writers out there.
Once I saw the voices of fear on paper, I knew exactly how I could refute each one:
- I am not a grate speller and my vocabulary is limited. Computers have this new great thing called spell check and there are numerous word of the day apps that can increase my lexicon.
- I never come up with clever and witty sayings, such as “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” – Mark Twain Every time I write my mom a Mother’s Day poem, she puts it on the fridge.
- There are too many better writers out there. If The Situation can do it, so can I.
What voices of fear do you constantly hear in your life? Put them down on paper or write them in the comments section below and it will help you see that they are really not that imposing after all.
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