We all know how to write, right? So why is it so hard? Why do we freeze up at the thought of writing our thoughts down on paper? I have a suspicion it started when we were all in grade school and we were judged by our teacher, that bastion of authority who had the power to reward our "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" essay with a radiant smile or the reverse...the dastardly scowl. The scowl was sure to set our fellow students to snickering and feeling superior to us, at least until it was their turn to stand up and read what they had written themselves. Then it became their turn to be afraid.
A lot of us have never recovered from the assaults on our creative writing yet many of us have harbored the desire to write, really write for years. But we freeze up because we're afraid of exposing our tender, creative selves again. Here is one way you can take the first tentative step towards undoing the fear of writing.
For years I was afraid to write openly and seriously. I was so afraid that I believed that even if I hid my stories I could never hide them well enough. Surely somebody would stumble upon them and I would come home one day to find them lying out in the open - exposed.
The writing that felt safe to me was letter writing and that's what I did as an outlet. I wrote letters to practically every one I knew, hundreds and hundreds of letters over the years. But the odd thing was, I rarely if ever mailed the letters out and I didn't know why nor did it bother me in the least that I didn't. Years later, in college and newly married my husband started noticing this odd little trait of mine. It made no sense to him that I would write so many letters and not mail them.
Unbeknownst to me, he started collecting them in a folder and months later presented the folder to me with these words, "If you don't start mailing these letters out to the people they're meant for -I will!" Startled by his ultimatum I exclaimed, "But I'm not writing all these letters to other people, I'm writing them to myself!" In that moment I realized I'd hidden my passion to be a real writer so deeply that I was only allowing it to surface in the form of letters. Even so, at least I was writing!
So if you want to start writing but you're afraid, try starting out doing what I did. Sit down and compose letters about people and things and places, factual or purely from your imagination.. Write as though you're decribing it all in a letter to your closest friend or a relative. It's not scary in the least and it'll ease you into writing regularly. Save each letter and file it away in a folder. A wonderful side effect of starting out writing this way is it gives you the best practice in developing your "authentic voice" - something all writers strive for.
Do this long enough and before long you may find you've written enough letters to make a novel of your own!
But here is what's so amazing. Eventually I was to learn that there is an entire style of story/novel writing called epistolary. This form was common in the 18th century and is still being used by contemporary writers of today.
And Excellant epistolary novel is "The Ginger Tree" by Oswald Wynd
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Ellen Essene
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