Fear of Writing Quotes

I'm afraid of coaching, of writer's classes, of writer's magazines, of books on how to write. They give me centipede trouble - you know the yarn about the centipede who was asked how he managed all his feet? He tried to answer, stopped to think about it, and was never able to walk another step.

I suffer from stage fright, so I blabber on stage and stop midway through my performances. I cannot even write a cheque, as it makes me nervous. Being around people makes me nervous. But I'm very comfortable in front of the camera, and this I realised many films later.

I hope to write someday and that’s even more terrifying than performing. You don’t just entertain the audience, you give them little bits of your soul.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

I have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. [...] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [...] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [...] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work.

The story you are afraid to write is usually the one you are meant to tell.

All my life, I've been frightened at the moment I sit down to write.

I couldn't write because my nervous system was so bad - I couldn't even use a pen.

I'm not a nervous person. I'm not afraid to be on TV. I'm only afraid when I write. When I'm at my desk I feel like most people would feel if they went on TV.

By the time I wrote my memoir, 'Men We Reaped,' I had been running from writing it for a long time. When the events in the book were happening, I knew I'd probably write about them one day. I didn't want to. I'd studied fiction, and I was committed to establishing myself as a fiction writer first.

Writing can be a frightening, distressing business, and whatever kind of structure or buffer is available can help a lot.

Because I've always been more afraid of writing than I have of doing anything visually such as directing or acting.

I have a horror of the blank page. I simply cannot write on a blank page or screen. Because once I do, I start to fix it, and I never get past the first sentence.

Getting to the point where I was ready to write a book has been about a 20-year journey of being, really honestly, too afraid to try - which I think is pretty common for people who are trying to write a large piece of fiction.

Ben Karlin is a friend of mine and was a writer on 'The Daily Show.' He's just put out a book and asked a bunch of writers from various disciplines to contribute. It was called 'Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me,' and of course I agreed, and then I actually had to sit down and write it. God, writing fiction is terrifying.

It is scary to write - period - for me, but once you get past the idea that it's scary to write, I still can only be who I am. As a writer, my job, to me, is to expose myself - to really sort of dig in and find out who I am and then put it on the page.

I'm afraid that the act of writing is so scary and anxiety-filled that I never laugh at all. In fact, when people tell me that such and such a scene or story is comical, I tend to gape. I did not intend comedy - ever, as far as I know. It's probably all a mistake. I am essentially a lugubrious writer. Ha ha!

Writing is inherently scary.

I'm always terrified when I'm writing.

I would never write, ever. I might as well exile myself.

I'm so terrified to write that I don't type at all.

I'm terrified of writing at night, for then I can't sleep. So I start slowly, slowly writing in the morning and go on into the late afternoon.

I wish that I had known back then that a mastery of process would lead to a product. Then I probably wouldn't have found it so frightening to write.

For a long period in my life - it lasted about 10 years - I had writer's block.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.