The Courage to Write

"This whole book is about all the things that writers are afraid of. I think if you’re a young writer you have all these anxieties, which just gnaw at you constantly, and you think, “My God! What a neurotic wreck I am.” But what you get from reading Keyes is that all writers are neurotic wrecks. And beyond that, you need to be a neurotic wreck to be a good writer, because the fears and the anxieties you have energise the prose. That’s Keyes’s whole point. It’s really an interesting thing to read about. I love the fact that a big chunk of the book is this inventory of fears, and all the things that writers are worried about and scared about. Right now we’re at the stage with our book, We Wanted to be Writers , where I’ve already gone through several different fears. Now it’s been printed, I’m scared to death that the first call I get from somebody who knows me is going to be, “Hey! Did you know about the typo on page 38?” Because then, for the rest of my life, the only thing I am going to remember about this book is the typo on page 38. Keyes talks about that particular fear. There are dozens of things writers have to be afraid of, from the start to the finish, and I got a big kick out of it because it was so true. To have someone articulate these fears for you, and list them, is comforting. It’s not nuts. This is what it means to be a writer. So I think it’s a really good book. Then he has a section about how to put the fears to work. I’m not sure that section works quite so well. It’s more words of comfort: “OK, you’re nervous, you’re facing a blank page, you’ve got page fright (like stage fright). Use that anxiety to focus your work on the moment.” It’s easier said than done. But it’s comforting to know that you’re not alone."