Lead with Light, Let Fear Follow

On Publishing to Be In Conversation with Fear

Each time I write and publish I wonder if it will be my last.

Even after two years of sharing my writing online, there lives a wellspring of fear and insecurity inside me. Nobody can see my pause or panic. 

Is this dumb? How bad is my craft? 

Am I being personal enough? Too personal? 

Should I have kept what I shared in a draft?

Because it’s in sharing my words, that I create a space so vast, I expand. But this space makes way for self-doubt to slow crawl across my mind.

But why? In a sense, sharing my writing is a way to accept my flawed humanity. I’m a private person, but I strive to write openly and honestly about what I keep inside of me. 

And this means my flaws feel fully on display. You and your eyes can quietly pick and prod at them and me. And sometimes, this weighs heavy on me; to be constantly aware of the way you can see the holes in who I am and what I think. 

So why ship my words to strangers online? Why open myself up to the possibility of judgment?

To confront and stay in conversation with my fears. I hear them loudest when I engage with what matters most to me: writing and connecting through the words I share with you. It’s what I’ve grown to love.

And if fear is innate, why try and deny it? I won’t let fear be the reason I stop sharing what I write and think. Maybe it should be the opposite. Maybe fear is every reason to write and share what I think.

By publishing, I choose to feel the fear, not feed it. It’s surrender; but instead of defeat, or feeling weak, I’m empowered. It’s always a victory. And through that, I grow stronger. I love that I can bounce between fear and courage through publishing online.

And that’s a power that can bleed into everything. That’s why each time fear tries to pull me to a stop, I hear it, but ignore it. I do what I love anyway.

When I wrote Beyond Words, my insides twisted with tension just thinking about people reading any details I shared about myself. Even though I loved writing it, I thought it lacked in quality. My fear screamed that it wasn’t worth publishing. But that didn’t stop me. 

Recently, I found out that the same essay was featured in the Write of Passage Weekly newsletter. 

In a moment like that, faced with fear, and second-guessing whether my writing is worthy of publishing, there’s a question that comes up for me.

A year from now, how will I feel about myself if I let fear stop me?

I’m weighted by the gravity of my own disappointment just thinking about it.

My fear was wrong. I was right to move through it and follow what I love.

And so, if I ever choose to stop publishing my writing, it won’t ever be out of fear. It will be because it’s what I want.

Because love is my lantern and fear is my shadow. I can’t have one without the other, and maybe I wouldn’t want to. 

So lead with your light. Write and share what’s inside you. Let your fear follow.

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Embrace the Break

Publishing your writing online is no joke. It sounds dramatic, but it can be such a psychological and emotional journey.

Combine that with trying to stay on top of everything else in your life—it can sometimes make keeping up with a consistent publishing cadence feel downright impossible.

Cue the guilt and alllll the bad feelings!

My dearest friend Elizabeth Edwards just wrote a lovely short piece on how she’s learning to navigate her own struggle with an evolving writing practice.

If you’re feeling guilty about falling off your own creative practice, I recommend checking it out below:

Embrace the break.

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Hi friend!

Thank you for reading Sunday Candy!

I hope you like it.

Now that you’ve read about how I stay in conversation with my fears—I wonder, how do you stay in conversation with your own fears?

& If you’re a new writer who struggles to publish—what stops you?

If there’s anything that resonates here, let me know! You get to read a bit about what I think and feel—I’d love to hear what you’re thinking and feeling too.

& If you know any writers struggling with their own publishing fears, please share this with them. I wrote this with the hope that it might help other people like me.

That’s all for now.

Stay Tender,

Sandra