Love this!!! I am working on a novel and spent many months wondering if I should chuck the whole thing and switch to memoir? In the end I decided to honour the story, keep it fictional but add some autofiction, and then surprise! the frisson of magic returned… the vulnerability Olympics have a shelf life but magic never dies…
Omgggggg THANKU!! I’m writing my first substack post right now and I’m literally taking a leap of faith and posting my writing publicly for the first time 😭😭 VERYYYY NERVOUS and it’s just a casual chat tbh but something inside me is somersaulting
This is so nicely written. Thank you for sharing and letting us look at this from your perspective. I can totally relate to this. I started to look at my writing as a form of coping mechanism, some sort of urge to deal with what I'm going through right now. It feels so powerful to express what you want, without being cut off in the middle of sentence and show how you really feel. The real voice. And being real is scarry and brave. But as my grandmother says: fortune favors the brave :)
I love this — especially the way you frame reluctance not as failure but as compass. Sometimes the body is saying “not yet.” Sometimes it’s saying “this way.”
What your saying is amazing and so true! I struggle figuring out if it's just fear holding me back or not.
I also feel like a fraud for wanting to write fictional tales when I mainly read the personal essay stuff. So then should I write personal essays because that's what I consume? Writing fiction can just feel so fake and indirect too!
What an interesting take! I think reading this helped me come to the opposite conclusion - I am just scared to write publicly. But non-fiction is what calls. Thanks for asking the question. You have a great way of conversing with your own head on the page. It resonates.
I’m feeling this so hard- I just launched my own works on Substack because I was paralyzed and nervous about how I’d be perceived. And here I am, 3 articles later! Thanks for these inspiring thoughts ☺️
You are making SUCH good points here! Never thought about it like that. I am definitely going to listen more deeply to all this data :)
keep me updated 🥹
🥺 bravo
beautiful read
I really needed this thank you 👌🏾
I loved every bit of this thanks for sharing this so much I resonate deeply
Love this!!! I am working on a novel and spent many months wondering if I should chuck the whole thing and switch to memoir? In the end I decided to honour the story, keep it fictional but add some autofiction, and then surprise! the frisson of magic returned… the vulnerability Olympics have a shelf life but magic never dies…
NEVER dies!
This was just lovely and so thoughtful. Tysm.
i'm so glad thank you for taking the time to read it :)
i'm going to read this for the third time.
🙂↕️
Omgggggg THANKU!! I’m writing my first substack post right now and I’m literally taking a leap of faith and posting my writing publicly for the first time 😭😭 VERYYYY NERVOUS and it’s just a casual chat tbh but something inside me is somersaulting
This is so nicely written. Thank you for sharing and letting us look at this from your perspective. I can totally relate to this. I started to look at my writing as a form of coping mechanism, some sort of urge to deal with what I'm going through right now. It feels so powerful to express what you want, without being cut off in the middle of sentence and show how you really feel. The real voice. And being real is scarry and brave. But as my grandmother says: fortune favors the brave :)
I love this — especially the way you frame reluctance not as failure but as compass. Sometimes the body is saying “not yet.” Sometimes it’s saying “this way.”
What your saying is amazing and so true! I struggle figuring out if it's just fear holding me back or not.
I also feel like a fraud for wanting to write fictional tales when I mainly read the personal essay stuff. So then should I write personal essays because that's what I consume? Writing fiction can just feel so fake and indirect too!
The cross roads! Am I even a writer at all!
What an interesting take! I think reading this helped me come to the opposite conclusion - I am just scared to write publicly. But non-fiction is what calls. Thanks for asking the question. You have a great way of conversing with your own head on the page. It resonates.
I love this so much and absolutely need to remember this 🫶
Hi
I’m feeling this so hard- I just launched my own works on Substack because I was paralyzed and nervous about how I’d be perceived. And here I am, 3 articles later! Thanks for these inspiring thoughts ☺️