we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage."
~ Cynthia Ozick
It's a curse
to have a thin skin. For a writer, it is deadly. If you need to be
liked by all the people all of the time, writing is impossible. Too
often I find myself wrestling with my need to be liked and my need to
write honestly.
In The Courage To Write,
Ralph Keyes says, "If you're not scared, you're not writing." Lately
I've been scared to death, afraid of exposing too much of my private
life and afraid of hurting people through my writing. The result has
been a big fat case of writer's block, not what Keyes had in mind.
To
do a decent job blogging you've got to take the risk to put yourself
out there. To be a good psychologist, you give people hope by saying,
"Yes, I've been there," disclosing just enough of your story to connect
with theirs, while keeping good boundaries. I'm a psychologist blogger
so I try to do both, walking the tight rope without ever betraying my
patients' confidence or privacy.
That doesn't mean I haven't
hurt people in the process, family and friends in particular. When that
happens I wish someone would just shoot me with a tranquilizer gun like
they used on the elephants in Wild Kingdom. The guilt is that
overwhelming. Anyone who writes publicly about life, (and isn't a
complete narcissistic jerk), knows what I'm talking about.
Personal
apologies will be made to those I know I've hurt with the hope of
forgiveness and if not that, understanding, and if not that, an
agreement to live and let live. To say I will never hurt anyone ever
again would be an empty promise because I am human and a writer and I
can't stop being either.
Now I get what Keyes was saying. He may as well say, "If you're not scared, you're not living," or "If you're not scared, you're not in love." The shame isn't in being scared. It's in letting the fear stop you.
This video by Therese Borchard, of Beyond Blue, helped me get off the writer's block, see my way through the guilt and start writing again.