Bloganuary writing prompt

What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?

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Five seconds after typing out this blog title:

Yessica: “Brad, I’m really proud of you.”
Me: “What for?” (Not the best response)
Yessica: “Just you writing again, and putting yourself out there.”

It’s funny how coincidences like that can happen. While shes’ proud of me for putting myself out there, I’m over here scared about showing people what I can do. It’s because I feel like a phony when I write. It was a subject I never excelled at in school, so who am I to try to be a writer here?

When I talked to my therapist about wanting to write again and how I was full of self-doubt, they recommended me to write for fifteen minutes a day. Even if I hated my writing, that self-doubt would eventually go away every time I sat down and wrote for the day. A year later, they were right. I sit down every day, and I write for the day. Whether it’s in my journal, on here, or in my writing app, I’m always writing something. But I still have a long way to go with getting to where I’d like to be with it all.

Now, I’m at a new chapter in my life with writing; I’m now finding a way to share my writing with everyone and shoot for publication. This is where I’m at, and it scares me. To eventually submit stories to people who have years of experience and get my work. That’s what goes through my head when I think about submitting anything to them. Even though I know the worst I’ll get is no response — it’s even better if they tell me that they’re not accepting it, in my opinion. I would at least know that it needs more work to improve.

That is my goal for this year. To send out multiple submissions for magazines to publish. I’ve already sent one of my poems to a contest, so it’s a start. I’m thinking — the more I submit, the easier it will get to put myself out there. That’s what I think, at least.

Oh, and spiders — they terrify me.