She Who Dares

There's a vulnerability about being a writer. It's the feeling that you're not just revealing your talent or lack of it to whoever reads your pieces. You're also baring your soul. You don't just worry that your work will be rejected. You worry because your writing is a reflection of you. When people reject your work, it feels as if they're rejecting you.

This sort of anxiety seems to occur at every level and every age, from the fledgling writer to the acknowledged literary master.

A beginner may turn up at a creative writing class, never having written anything. Perhaps they've written a few things, some poems perhaps, but their writing has languished, unread, in their bottom drawer. How many times have I heard someone say, 'I've never let anyone see these before because I don't know if they're any good' ?

I was at a workshop at the weekend where one very capable lady (an experienced career journalist) was extremely nervous about letting anyone see her poetry. She told us she'd brought along a poem that was 'very old and one that I don't care about too much', so that it wouldn't hurt so much if people hated it.

As it turned out, she needn't have worried. It was a lovely poem, full of telling detail and psychological insight. I bet I wasn't the only one who went home thinking, 'I wish I'd written that.'

But it isn't just beginner writers or people switching to a different type of writing who can fall prey to this kind of insecurity. It can afflict even distinguished, accomplished writers. I suppose in a way, the reason they feel afraid is because they've got further to fall.

That's the trouble with writing. I suppose a writer's apprehension about how their work will be received is a bit like the stage fright that assails musicians or actors. There's the pressure that 'you're only as good as your last performance'.

Writers can get the jitters too. We all have off-days or weeks when we feel we're not producing our best work. Or perhaps the piece we're working on will be excellent one day, but just hasn't quite got there yet.

And everyone has heard of those sad one-hit wonders who create a stir early on in their career with their first published novel or play, but whose subsequent works never quite achieve the same heights of success.

Then there's the person who used to be a big name, at the top of the writing tree for a while, for years even, but fashions change and no one now wants to commission him. A few months ago, I attended a fascinating talk by a wonderful television writer who in his day was a legendary figure, the creator of more than one landmark TV drama series. He still writes, but now he is reduced to giving away playscripts on computer disks to anyone who wants to read them because it's the only way they will ever see the light of day.

So why do people bother to write at all if writing is fraught with so many difficulties. If one's ego is so much at risk, surely writing is a very masochistic activity? Wouldn't it be safer not to bother writing at all, or at least to keep one's writing secret for the sake of one's pride and one's sanity? Maybe those beginner writers who keep their writing locked in the drawer have got the right idea?

But writing is a form of communication, born from the need to communicate.

Communicate not only one's ideas, but one's very self. And it doesn't matter if we writers never earn a penny from our writing, never get published, never make it big. It's the writing that's the important thing. We don't choose to write. We have to write.

And for most of us, there comes a time when we want to share what we've written with somebody, even if it is just the missus or Auntie Freda. We want to know if we've managed to communicate. To see if anyone has managed to get our writing. To see if anyone has managed to get us.

Because if they have, if even one person has, that's worth far most than years and years of costly psychotherapy. It's worth all the insecurity and uncertainty that we've had to suffer. It's worth every drop of lifeblood we've shed from our open wounds.