Why I’m Afraid to Write

   Well, it’s time we talked about how scary it is to write. How totally awful it is, sometimes, to sit down to the computer or the page, feigning some kind of even keel. Half the time, I’m terrified. I’m afraid of dipping into the places my poems call me to. I’m afraid of saying things I think are stupid or reveal my ignorance. Of making mistakes. I don’t want to relive my childhood, or my teenage-hood or what I’ve come to call “my erotic failures.” I don’t want to revisit the death of my son, or my brother. I don’t want to remember things and people I loved that are gone. Mostly, I don’t want to do any of this while I’m alone.

Also, I’m afraid, sometimes, of how small my voice must seem in the midst of the Great Conversation of Poetry, which includes Whitman and Clifton and Gilbert and Cernuda and endless others. I want and don’t want to add my voice to theirs. And then I’m sad because I have written three books while some writers who shall not be named have written, like, twenty books by my age and made movies and obviously fall under the umbrella of genius. I am sad about that.

   And sometimes it feels like just so much navel-gazing I can’t believe I’m wasting my non-genius life.

And then there’s something about the frustration of sitting on the brink of something––for hours, or years––not knowing what comes next. There is a restlessness I feel when I am trying to turn the corner of poem, to bring it around the bend. It’s something like fear, like exhilaration. And sometimes it’s just petrifying.

 And then I think of how much I don’t want to reveal my inner world or my sad stories and how I’d rather hide under a rock then mention my breasts or my broken heart in a public place. Or in front of my friends. Or at all. The way private torture has the tendency to end up in public. Which I also dread.

Now, there are as many—and more––things on the counter side to shift the scales, but today I want to acknowledge and talk about fear and dislike which are really the children of resistance.

The poet John Keats once wrote this oft-quoted passage to his brother:

“At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously,” he wrote. “I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

 So yes, this. Just replace man with person and there you have it. It’s about developing the ability to sit with the discomfort, even horror. So many nights I skim, veering toward the less horrifying poems. Cleaning the kitchen counters. Watching TV reruns from the 90’s. Eating almonds with dark chocolate chips. My best form of avoidance is to read other poets––ones whose work is new to me, or who I already admire––which is, at least, productive. Or writing about writing. For example, I would rather be writing this than working on a poem I have about my underwear and grief.

 So there you have it. The way that writing is something like hovering in the air above a cliff. Or entering a tunnel and not knowing what lives there in the dark. Only the feeble little flashlight of a pen to light the way.

Some Safety Tricks for When It’s All Too Much

Set a timer to limit your writing time and don’t go over.

Write with someone else in the room––a writing date.

Write in a public place.

Choose a form that gives structure to the poem. A sonnet for example.

Write a poem in the third person for distance.

Break up the writing with brief forays into research. Google away. This can be fun!

Which is really at the heart of all of this. I wouldn’t write (and neither would you) if we didn’t love it. If it weren’t also a pleasure. A fine and lasting pleasure. A delicacy. A thrill. Oh, how we want to be known, and to know! It’s Biblical. Erotic. Fantastic. I mean–––isn’t it? Despite everything. Or because of. Who knows? The risk and thrill are one. But what a privilege to say even one thing that opens a door for someone else, a thing that allows them to enter the world in a new way. To take their hand and lead them to that field where neither of you would set foot alone.