How Writers Can Stop Being Consumed by the Fear of Not Being Good Enough

Although I have always considered myself a writer, I have also spent many years not writing. In fact, for most of high school, college, and my 20s, I didn’t write at all. Not one story, not one poem. During that period, I was mostly entangled in living the life of a depressed alcoholic, while trying to keep my shit somewhat together in the meantime. So, you could say I didn’t have time to write, but the truth was that I was really in no place to write.

I didn’t start writing seriously — and by seriously I mean that I committed to sitting down and doing it at least once a week — until 2006, one year after I got sober. Two things happened when I committed to the practice of writing. Number one, I found that it was hard. It challenged me on nearly every level and forced me to look honestly at my addictions, my demons, my self-loathing, and my depression. Number two, it felt better than anything I had ever done before. It felt like a huge relief to open doors within myself that had been closed for years and let all those long-buried thoughts and feelings pour out of me onto the page.

I spent 2006 until 2008 writing a huge sprawling mess of a memoir about my drinking days. I wasn’t thinking about revisions. I wasn’t thinking about publishing. I wasn’t even thinking about showing it to anyone, ever. It…