I finished my 30 Day Challenge on 30th November. It was exhausting, exhilharating, inspiring. My Queer Writers Retreat is up and running (and there’s an earlybird discount if you book before Christmas Eve), this blog is growing steadily and I now have the confidence to play, experiment, have fun with ideas in a way that my perfectionist self warned me against in the past.

And yet. The fear. It’s always there. Lurking.

I teach people free-writing*. I have abseiled off the top of a 500m building, done stand-up comedy, performed to a 200-strong rowdy audience wearing little else but my underwear and a long velvet cape, stood up to bullies. So why does a blank page hold such horror?

I have been re-reading On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. I love this book. Love its humour, advice and wisdom. It’s candour. But most of all, I love the intimacy King creates, as if he is speaking only to me, as if this is just a relaxed conversation between us two.  It is simply a joy to be in his company. (Hell, if he was writing about corporate tax law, I’d still lap it up.).

There are a couple of lines, near the end, that I want to screen-print onto a large poster, frame and hang on every wall in my house. To remind me. To remind me what you, and I, and everyone already knows deep down:

The scariest moment, writes King, is always just before you start.  After that, things can only get better.

Oh Stephen, you speak the truth!

So. Sit. Pick up your pen. And start.

 

*the art of just getting the fuck on with it

• How To Use Stephen King’s “On Writing” Advice (millieho.net)