Do It Scared

I believe it was the winter of 2006 when I logged on to the family computer. It was a big hunk of a thing and sat on a wooden desk in what was aptly named the computer room. There were other things in there besides the computer – the ironing board, boxes upon boxes of old family videos, and the overall miscellaneous junk that tends to get accumulated over time that doesn’t have anywhere else to go. But it’s the computer room, because that’s the main purpose of it.

I’m pretty sure we were still running on good ol’ Windows 98 at the time. YouTube was still a very novel thing, and we didn’t have very many games on the computer. The ones we did have I had played already so I wasn’t about to spend my free time replaying those. So I open Microsoft Word. As I stared at the blank page, I thought about maybe writing a diary entry, thinking it would be cool to have an electronic diary of sorts. But I quickly decide against it, knowing there’s a big possibility someone else in the house could read it if they got on the computer.

2006 was a little while ago now (and I was only nine), so some of the details are a bit fuzzy, but here’s what I think happened. I decided to write a story and did my best to come up with a good creative idea. But of course, being that young, all I could think of was wanting to find some magical land to escape to. Maybe I watched the 2005 The Chronicles of Narnia movie recently, I’m not sure. Regardless, I started writing about one of my neighbor friends and I stumbling on a glowing hole in the snow and falling through it into a Narnia-like world.

Either my attention span was too small to stay interested or I was pulled away to go do something else, because I remember stopping just as we went through the portal. I saved the document and shut off the computer.

And then I forgot all about it and didn’t come back to it.

Some time later, maybe the next day or so, my mom said, “Hey, I saw what you wrote!”

What I wrote? Oh yeah, the Narnia thing.

My mom goes on to say something like, “I liked it, but why did *insert something a character did here*?”

I don’t think she was upset or trying to be critical, but being questioned like that made me feel bad in a way that’s hard to explain. “I don’t know, she just did.”

From then on, I never wrote anything else on the computer out of fear of someone reading it. No, all of my stories went in notebooks that got hidden behind dressers or in closets. Nobody was reading my writing ever again.

Believe it or not, that went on for years, even through middle school, high school, and college. Unless you were a teacher grading a story or a paper, you were never going to see a single word. You were never going to even know that I liked writing. I decided it was just something I did for me, something I did for fun. Any kind of feedback or criticism terrified me to think about, especially if it was coming from a family member.

When I was a junior in high school, I remember my creative writing teacher telling me, “You’re a writer. And writers have to write.” Have to? Hm, no, I don’t think I have to do anything. Try to imagine a 16-year-old thinking this, and it will probably make sense. I did not say that out loud, by the way. 16-year-old me may have been sassy in her head, but to a teacher? Never. But those were my genuine thoughts for a long time. Yes, I liked to write. But did I have to write? No, I didn’t write for anyone. I wrote for me.

It wasn’t until last year when I was 25 that I finally understood what she meant.

I do need to back up a little bit further than last year first, though. In the summer of 2020, like a lot of people, I was laid off from my job. I was okay financially despite this, but I did put a lot of time and energy into job searching. After a few months, I realized I needed something to do besides rotating between Indeed, LinkedIn, and other similar sites or else I was going to lose my mind. I truly could not tell you why, but I decided to try to get back into writing regularly.

It started off okay. I had a decent idea I was excited to write about, but I ran out of steam after a couple weeks and put it down. Life continued to happen. I did an online course on data analytics to spruce up my resume and eventually did find work. It was actually in this weird in-between phase that I found Vocal. I posted maybe three stories on here, and I can confidently tell you they are not great. You’re free to check them out. They’re still on here as reminders to myself of my growth.

Despite not loving what I wrote, I realized I really missed writing. I was having fun doing it even if I didn’t have great ideas. I wanted to get better. I decided to take an online writing course in the fall/winter of last year. It was exactly what I needed in so many ways. For what was probably the first time in my whole life, I didn’t mind getting constructive criticism. I even submitted the little bit of writing I did back in 2020, the one I said I was excited about at the time. I still liked it, so I was looking to get any feedback I could get. It was a strange feeling after going my entire life never wanting anyone to read my writing.

The feedback I got was so overwhelmingly positive, I did not know what to do with myself. People found it compelling and well-paced. They liked the characters. I truly couldn’t believe it. And it was then that I understood the words of my writing teacher. Writers have to write because writing is such a core part of who they are. They may try to push it away, but it will come back with a vengeance. For me, that looked like an idea that would not let go of me until I put it on paper and put it out into the world. My characters demanded I tell their story despite years going by of me ignoring them. (By the way, I have the first chapter of this work posted here on Vocal. If you would like to check it out and leave feedback, please do. I’d love to know your thoughts.)

I think nine-year-old me would be shocked that I’m not only willingly putting my work out there but that I’m excited to do it. I love hearing feedback, especially constructive criticism. I want to get better. I want to improve. The only way to do that is to share.

To those who are scared, do it scared. Do it shakingly terrified. The best things come from those moments.