For some reason, others trust me with their work and ideas (what do they think I am, a real writer?). What comes along with this privilege is listening to the stories of doubt and fear. They are writing things that are close to their hearts and they want to convey emotion and craftsmanship, but are scared of the can of worms that will open and if they will fall flat of their expectations.
As a writer, whether I am writing a poem, a blog, or other, these feelings are all the time. As writers we choose to lay ourselves open. We are books in constant creation, edit, and rewrite mode. We are in competition with others (in friendly and not so friendly ways), but more importantly with ourselves. It's easy to get caught up in the politics of writing and the writing life.
But I am here to tell you a lesson that I've learned, but need to reenforce often. The number one rule to writing anything is one simple thing:
GET IT OUT
Forget about editing. Forget about censoring. It's great to have concepts/ideas for some of your work, but if you are getting caught up in that more than actually writing, then you are losing raw material. All you have to do is:
GET IT OUT
Fine-tuning comes later. Just continue with what you have and worry about the details after. If you get it right on the first draft, bless you. You are amazing. Share it with the world. But remember it is okay to take your time with a piece, then share. Hey, you don't have to share it at all if you don't want to. Writing is ours to do what we want with it. You are not going to share everything you write. So remember that no matter that doubts and fears you have, don't let it stop you. All you have to do is:
GET IT OUT
Seems easy right? It's not. It never will be. BUT you will save yourself some grief if you try to remember this one rule.
Till next time, all you have to do is: GET IT OUT!