How to Turn Off the Negative Voices in Your Head and Just Write!

Do you get tired of all the hassle, hustle, and struggling to make it work?

Photo by Author

Self awareness is really a tricky S.O.B! Just when you thought you had it all together, and was doing fine with yourself, something or someone comes along and knocks you off your game.

What’s even crazier, is that sometimes that someone who knocks you off your game can be YOU. We writers do have a tendency to get in our own way. That was why one of the first things I ever self-published was the little ebook you see in the image, titled: “Shut Up and Write!”

I’ve had a long hard life, and I’m still on my path of self discovery, but considering all the things I’ve been through in my life, I think I’m finally doing okay.

Writing helps, and I can definitely credit writing on Medium for a lot of my emotional healing. But even though writing stories about my past personal experiences are therapeutic, and starting to be enjoyable, other things keep trying to get in the damn way!

For example:

I started writing on Medium on May 1, 2021 (my birthday :) and in that time, I’ve published 118 stories. I started 4 publications and was thinking of starting a 5th, but I’m not getting the feedback that I hoped for, when I put out feelers about the publication.

And that kind of brings me to my point. I didn’t come to this site to start setting up publications. I didn’t come here to start writing a gazillion stories about writing on Medium, or to provide writing tips at all; been there, done that. But yet, that’s what I find myself doing, and why?

Addicted to Writing

I already know I’m addicted to writing, I’ve given myself over to that reality. I know it’s an addiction, because I’ve tried to quit on multiple occasions, but in spite of how frustrated, angry, sad, depressed, or whatever negative emotion I might have been feeling to make me want to stop, I couldn’t quit.

I’ve never been able to give it up, through all the online attempts to write and earn money, ghost writing for others and letting them get all the credit, peddling my articles for pennies while the…