Tackling Writer’s Anxiety

Writing can be an anxious business, and sometimes it can be easy to become so nervous about creating and promoting our work that we end up not writing at all. There are lots of things to add worries to a writer’s mind, such as pressing deadlines (which are never fun), the fear of putting yourself out there and good-old-fashioned “everything I’ve written is rubbish” panic.

While its unlikely that you’ll ever make this self-doubt disappear entirely, there are a variety of ways to tackle any writing anxieties in order to stop them interrupting your creative experience and grow your self confidence.

Meditate Regularly.

By handling anxiety with meditation, you give yourself a great base from which to increase your writerly confidence. While there are ways to target specific worries, meditation helps you deal with the anxiety itself. In particular, when you feel wrung out after sweating over sentence structure and the clichés you can’t seem to avoid, meditation gives your brain a chance to unwind. Having a clear mind will put all your problems into perspective, and will stop you falling down the worry rabbit-holes that are strewn across any creative process.

This is true whether you are experiencing habitual nervousness and concern, or something significantly more pronounced. If your anxiety has become more serious and is manifesting itself physically, meditation is also useful when you are thinking about how to stop a panic attack.

Act How You’d Like Others to Act

Writing is hard, and making it as a writer – whether you just want an audience for your work or are trying to make a living from the practise – takes a lot of personal effort and support from others. This support is a great antidote to any creative angst or apprehension, and luckily the Internet has facilitated a huge writing community.

Whether it’s from the belief that what goes around comes around, or just that it’s good to help others, being helpful and supportive within this community is vital. Read and comment on others work, recommend jobs to and refer those that you think are brilliant but need a helping hand, don’t ignore emails, even if the reply is “thanks but no thanks” – it all goes a long way.

Firstly, it just feels nice to be supportive to others, and you’ll also get to see that your anxieties are not unique to you, with a whole group of people ready to encourage you whenever you need it.

When Pitching, Ditch Formality and Keep it Short

This may not be something you can do in every case, and it will take a bit of judgement to decide exactly how much formality is needed in each scenario, but when you are pitching guest posts or article ideas remember that there is a human on the other end. Writing in a way which feels unnatural in order to fulfil some imagined requirements will make you forget that there isn’t someone scary and formidable judging your work, and that you have no need to worry. The worst they can do is not reply, and if anyone ever is rude, that’s their problem.

Also, you don’t need to send reams of writing. Much like how nervousness can lead to babbling in everyday life, it can be easy to feel that you need to pad out emails that you think are important. The people reading them aren’t only people, they are often rather busy, so you can afford to keep it short and not agonise over every word.

Be Well Prepared for Deadlines

We’ve been told to work well ahead of time and get projects neatly tied off months in advance since we were teenagers, but the fact is that there’s plenty of us who will always leave work until the last minute, no matter how much stress it causes. While getting things done before deadlines come crashing down is a very good idea when you want to avoid panic and anxiety, there are other ways to prepared for deadlines, you just have to know your habits.

If you are the sort of person who’ll start and essentially finish a project straight away, but then spend weeks agonising over every full stop and adjective, you can still finish the work well in advance but then make sure you put it away until the day before it’s due. This means you’ll have the comfort of knowing it’s finished without the endless opportunities to obsess over it.

For those right on the other side of the coin, who know they’ll be pulling all-nighters and not leaving their laptops for a few intense days because they’ve left it all too late (again), you can be prepared in a different way. If you can, book the day after a deadline off work as holiday, so you have plenty to time to recover, and don’t forget to stock up on coffee. Think ahead and plan around your usual working habits, rather than try to change them entirely.