Here are some other things you might want to read related to the theme Making Writing Less Scary.

“Fear” by Chris Jones, published in March 2011 at his blog Son of Bold Adventure (This post is no longer available on his site.)

Before my best stories—even when I’m nearly sure they will be good, or at least should be good, because the material is there—my overwhelming feeling is, You’d better not fuck this up, stupid. My feeling is that if I somehow blow it, if I somehow fail these astronauts or dead soldiers, then I need to quit the business, never to write again. Because only a failure could fail people like that. Only someone like me could betray them.

And yet I keep writing. I’ve written something every day this year.

Because I still have hope, Love, hope against hope, that one day I’ll write something perfect. The way a golfer dreams he might shoot 59, I dream of that story that I’ll be able to read years later and still not want to change a single word. I dream that I’ll write “Death of a Racehorse.” I dream that I’ll write “Black.”

And that’s all I can tell you. All I can tell you is that you probably are a good writer, and you probably write plenty of good sentences. Readers aren’t wrong. Which means that one day, even you might feel that you’ve made your world right.

And from the Thesis Whisperer How to Write 1000 Words a Day (and not go batshit crazy)

The basic premise is: “there is no such thing as writing, only rewriting” and that half the struggle of a thesis is to get stuff out of your head and onto the page in order to start the rewriting process.

Enjoy. And recommend others in the comments if you like (all posts with links get moderated so they might take a while to show up).

Finding it hard to protect your writing time?

You are not alone. It’s like exercise. Some people can make a commitment to exercise, figure out what they’ll do, and do it regularly at home, by themselves. Personally, if I don’t sign up for a class, I don’t do it. The Academic Writing Studio is like a yoga studio for academic writers: A Meeting With Your Writing provides synchronous classes to help you keep your commitment to write regularly, other resources help you set priorities and boundaries so writing fits into your schedule, and electronic forums provide community support. Join us.

This series of post originally published in March 2011. Edited May 30, 2016.