if you're struggling with writing anxiety try to list your worries

In this article i want to talk about-

how an exercise of listing your worries can be a valuable tool in managing anxiety and developing a healthier and more productive writing practice.

A lot of writers feel anxieties about many different things, so not only are they worried about getting rejected, they're also worried about getting scorned or mocked. They're also worried about the memory worried by the memories of some past teacher who told them they couldn't
write, or they're worried that they don't produce good quality work, or they're worried that they don't know how to punctuate well, or they're worried that they're not smart enough or they're worried that writing is too painful. whatever there are a lot of different things that people get worried about as writers.

Just in case you missed part 1

The Combinational Character of Anxiety

For many writers, i think it's more the combination of anxieties that causes a problem than it is any one individual anxiety. To be sure, they're big anxieties if you tell yourself “ i'm worried i have to write my entire book.”

That's a pretty big anxiety that might be a barrier, but if you have only one anxiety one cause of concern, you can focus on it and work on it more easily when you have a lot of different things all drawing you in different directions. it's hard to focus your efforts.

People who would not be stopped by any one anxiety alone can get overwhelmed and paralyzed when they are faced with a large number of different concerns. If and when severe anxiety is interfering with your ability to write, your ability to focus on your writing try this exercise.

Listing Cause of Anxiety

I recommend this exercise for when you're already feeling anxiety because listening your worries listening your causes of concern can raise your anxiety level if you're already feeling anxious then you're already feeling anxious.

Of course, you don't want to force yourself to do this exercise if it's making you feel worse, but if you're already feeling bad and struggling to write try this exercise. see if you can't gain some insight and maybe find a little relief by working through it.

So, the first part of the exercise is to open a blank page and make a list of things about writing that are making you anxious

Consider as many different things as possible throw anything on the page if you think it's a potential cause. Consider responses from other people including the chance of getting rejected next week as well as that fear of that teacher who said mean things about you 10 years ago.

Consider your personal shortcomings, your inability to write, your lack of knowledge whatever it is. consider practical difficulties or barriers like the difficulty of writing or the difficulty in accessing some resource. Consider daunting tasks like, how hard it is to write a certain scene or a certain piece of your argument or present a certain piece of evidence.

Be specific, the more different things you can specify on this page, the more things you have that you maybe can work on and the more clearly you specify each specific fear or cause of anxiety, the better you can identify a response.

I would say spend about 10 minutes on this exercise before moving on to part two. Don't turn it into a long ordeal, but you can use your judgment about the time you're spending. If you're finding it useful just to list the anxieties if you're finding relief from your anxiety by listening the anxieties, by all means spend a little longer on it.

At some point we do want to pick one item, we do want to move on to part two ,which is to pick one specific issue and to focus on that one specific issue. Now if you're doing the first part of this exercise and you write something on your list that jumps out of you and you can say “oh yeah i want to work on this right now,” “ i can do this right now” and you can go do that. Well, then go do that.

This exercise is intended to help you start working again, it's intended to help you if you're feeling stopped by anxiety to get working again. So, if you make this list and something comes on that list and you feel i can go work on it, that's what we really want. We want you to be working on your project right ?

Choose One Individual Entry From The List

Once you've made a list of the anxieties, once you've finished part one spent 10 minutes or whatever. Look over that list and choose one specific on which to work. Choose something that feels manageable, so that you can do something, so you can take action.

Some anxieties on your list might be related to individual tasks that you have to accomplish. A big tile of tasks can be overwhelming but if you can just pick one to work on that one might feel individually manageable. So if you have tasks on your list. Specific tasks, you can identify one that feels manageable go work on that. That would be great.

Because then you can cross it off your list have it done and feel like you've made some progress. Other things on your list will probably be more general, emotional, intellectual concerns, fear of rejection. You can't just do some exercise to work eliminate fear of rejection, you can't accomplish that like some task but you can work on fear of rejection
and if we identify specific fears sometimes we can work on them.

In this article series of tips for anxious writers, i am trying to address specific fears that people have and talk about how you might approach that specific fear through shifting your perspective and working on writing exercises.

So, for example fear of rejection or memory of that teacher who told you 10 years ago that you were a terrible writer. That kind of fear of a negative audience response pen can sometimes be countered by an exercise of trying to imagine a positive audience.

Different things can be addressed in different ways once we've identified what the problem is and if we have made the list if we can identify one problem to work on, we can maybe cross that off our list and feel a little bit better.

In the long run we want to be working on developing a healthy practice that helps us control our anxiety and manage our anxiety and in such a practice, this exercise of listening worries can be a valuable diagnostic tool. It will help you identify areas of difficulty and find response, so that you can work more effectively.

Conclusion

To summarize many writers face many different fears and often although each individual fear could be managed alone. In combination they become overwhelming. If you're feeling anxiety struggling to write because you're feeling anxiety, do the exercise of listening your worries.

Make them explicit put them on the page so that you can look at them. The more clearly you define an issue that's causing you concern, the easier it is to find a way to address it. Then once you've made a list you can pick one cause of anxiety to focus on and to work on.

In the long run we want to practice , we want to come back to this day after day. If we're struggling with anxiety, we're not going to eliminate it in a day, but if we practice, if we use our tools to manage our anxiety, we can get an effective and important reduction in overall anxiety through practice.

Thanks very much for stoping by, i hope you found this useful.

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