I don't need permission to write. I don't need permission to write. I don't need permission to write.
Repeat 1000 times (or until I believe it). I have as much entitlement to write as anyone else in the Twitter/blogosphere, so why am I struggling to believe that what comes out of my head and into words on a page is as valid as that of anyone else?
Fear of criticism? Yes, certainly, but so what? Why is my opinion and my expression of it any less valid than that of any of the few souls who may read this? It's not, and it's time I stopped saying it and started believing it. Or growing enough of a shell not to care. I usually manage it on Twitter, where I'm much more visible, so why not here?
Une crise de confiance? Most definitely. My self-confidence has taken a real bashing over the past few years. I was asked to leave my job in the Civil Service after 10 years in April 2011. I'd been struggling to cope with the work for about 3 years, not to mention battling depression and anxiety which caused what it would be overegging it to call a breakdown in February 2009. (They were perfectly entitled to do this; I'd been on a performance improvement plan for about nine months - which in itself I found incredibly stressful and reduce my confidence even further. It was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that I would fail to achieve the expected standard). So I've made a few half-hearted attempts to find a job these past two months, after giving myself a clear six months off, but I'm started to believe I'm unemployable.
So I have very low self-esteem, to the point where I'm not keen to go out and socialise and, when I do, am profoundly glad to come back to the house in which I'm currently taking refuge.
It's not just that. The past few years have made me question my intellect and my ability to think and express myself coherently and with clarity. Depression is different for everyone; for me it's made my thought process feel like trying to see through porridge. My brain has become porridgey.
And that's before I come to the actual process of writing. At primary school I was always singled out for my creative writing to the point that my peers were sick of my stories being read out in class and taunted me for it. At secondary school there was none of that business; creativity was stifled - we had to read and analyse other people's writing. Writing stories and poems was just not a part of the curriculum and it frankly didn't occur to me to do it in my own time. Homework, dance classes, my part-time jobs and the usual teenage preoccupations left little time. My best friend and I began to write a diary, aged about thirteen, but neither of us stuck to it and I ended up putting the contents of mine on the fire.
GCSE's, A levels, university; essays were all about formulating an argument and back that up with facts, both in literature and history. Then I began full-time work and, as I have worked for 'brands' (albeit most of them public sector) since 1997, I have been obliged to learn and use a corporate style wherein freedom of expression and creativity win you frowns not friends.
I must speak to my friend Tom for a bit of how to/inspiration. An English graduate, he works compressed hours at the MoD in order to have one day a week for writing. He's disciplined enough to have been doing just that for eight years and has a manuscript with a publisher. The wheels seem to have slowed down of late, but getting someone to represent you, but when every other person professes to be writing a book or a script, is no mean feat.
That's another thing. These days everyone's at it. How do you know if you're any good or not? I've always been worried by the existence of creative writing classes. How do you get better by practising? I can't comprehend that at all. Practising music, dancing or painting I can, to some extent, see the benefit of, but I still subscribe to the mantra that 'you either got it or you ain't' and no amount of practice will lift you from competent to outstanding and effortless.
But actually, it doesn't matter if I'm incoherent and, frankly, just crap. I'm doing this for catharsis (although I know I'm not going to be brutally honest, I don't have it in me - the very idea makes my skin crawl) and to see if I can.
See you on the other side.
