Fear of Writing

Amber Kelly-Anderson wrote an interesting post f or Ploughshares on the fear of writing -- a fear so uncommon it actually doesn't have a name, so she gave it one: Graphobibliophobia.

The issue is nothing so simple as writer’s block or lack of inspiration—I have three decent ideas that have moved to the outlining stage. When the time arrives for actual writing though, I have a crippling fear of writing a novel or book. I’m probably not alone in this fear. Things like the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where participants are challenged to buckle down and write an entire novel during the month of November, indicate that others share this same struggle with making a novel a reality. I wonder how many of them are in my boat, too paralyzed by fear to dive in?

I can only speak as an unpublished writer, at least an unpublished writer of fiction, but writing a book is an enormous challenge. To pretend otherwise is laughable. Yes, there are writers for whom the words just flow from their fingertips. (You guys can turn away now, because this doesn't apply to you.) But the goal of NaNoWriMo isn't to write a novel, but a draft of a novel. A scrub draft. I have exactly one things on my hard drive -- a short story -- that didn't go through several revision before I was reasonably happy with it. I have no idea why the literary gods smiled on me that day, but I'll take it, and I'll slog my way through the rest.