- Make me money/famous
- Help me be remembered long after I’m dead and gone
- Give my life meaning
- Make me worthy of love (because I’ll have accomplished something other people will pay attention to)
- Make me enough, help me feel valuable/successful
- Help my family “see” the real me
- Help me understand myself once and for all
- Jumpstart the life I want (filled with travel, adventure, love, meeting cool people, creating cool shit, etc)
- Keep me safe from everyone who might criticise me and from all the “bad” emotions I’m feeling
That’s a shit-ton of pressure to put on writing. So, it’s no wonder I’m such a perfectionist. It’s no wonder I don’t let myself come up with story ideas, let alone write them down. Because what if I fail at the thing that’s supposed to make me worthy?
So, instead, I refuse to give up the dream of writing while also not writing because it’s too much pressure to do it poorly.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.
And I’ll be stuck in this standstill until I recognize it’s not writing’s job to keep me from feeling shitty. It’s not writing’s job to make me feel enough/worthy/successful. Or to bring me love and adventure.
That’s my job. The writing is just a bonus.