The Courage to Write
The essence of courage is to willingly feel our vulnerability; this is what allows us to respond to life with an undefended, wise heart.
– Tara Brach, Psychologist and Meditation Teacher
I’ve always admired the courage of actors. Getting up on stage in front of people you don’t know, reciting hundreds of lines from memory, reaching for high notes without knowing what’s going to come out of your mouth until the moment you sing? That’s scary stuff.
But what about writers? Our craft is rarely performed in a high-stakes context like a Broadway stage, a field of battle, or a surgical operating room. Instead, we often work alone in apartments, or maybe in coffee shops, surrounded by other people staring at their own small, glowing screens.
Yet writing takes courage, too, because it involves an encounter with fear. When you’re writing your truth, you’re sharing something of who you are and what you really believe with the reader. That requires vulnerability – even when no one else is watching – and for many of us, vulnerability often leads fear.
In my own writing practice, I’ve noticed three kinds of courage that are often required of me: the courage to start, the courage to take creative risks, and the courage to share.
I. The Courage to Start
White. A blank page or canvas.
– Sondheim/Lapine, Sunday in the Park With George
Beginning any creative endeavor is a bold and courageous act. With writing, I think it’s especially challenging because we don’t merely start each project with a blank page. Writers and composers start each day with a blank page! Painters and sculptors may get to see their colors and shapes accumulate over time, but for us, the cursor is always at the precipice of a void.
So what do we do? First, we find the courage the start a new project by taking a leap of faith. It takes courage to trust that still, small voice inside that wants to create this new thing, and to listen to it above all those other voices saying “Who would want to read that?” “It’s already been done!” “That won’t be commercially successful!” and perhaps the most damaging, “Who are you to write this?”
As far as the daily re-starting, I have found that it’s as much about routine as courage. Personally, I don’t think I could handle going through the entire leap-of-faith psychodrama every time I sit down to write. If I did, I’d quickly burn out and never get any writing done.
Instead, I try to work with my daily fear by setting up routines and deadlines that create a “cocoon” in the midst of a busy life, a space in which to get writing done. Usually that means carving out 1–2 hours, 5 days a week, to write. It means doing my best to avoid my phone, email, and social media during that time. It means self-care: making sure I’m eating well, sleeping, and exercising. And it means finding ways to connect with others around the writing, perhaps through a staged reading or a weekly writing group, for both support and accountability.
II. The Courage to Take Creative Risks
When I got my first teaching job at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a fancy school in the DC suburbs, the principal told me that her goal was to “encourage students to take academic risks.”
At the time that sounded lofty, especially for high schoolers, but in hindsight I think there was wisdom in her words. In a school full of high-achieving kids, the default choice is often the safest route — but that’s not how you grow.
In my own writing, I’ve found that once I sit down to write, the second type of fear that comes up is around creative risks. These risks usually are not around the bigger decisions, like “Do I finish this chapter or not?” (Yes, finish the chapter!) Instead, there’s a more subtle kind of courage that’s required when I’m struggling with a lyric or story that is especially vulnerable, confusing, or even triggering.
In those moments, I’m faced with a choice. Sometimes that choice is: Do I keep my writing at the surface level, where it feels safer, or do I dive into the more personal, uncomfortable, vulnerable emotional territory?
Other times, the choice looks more like: Do I stick with the plan? Do I keep going with the story as I imagined it — usually in a way that seems likely to “work” — or do I listen to what this character is suddenly telling me he/she wants to do, and venture into the unknown? Do I go down the rabbit hole that’s suddenly opened up in front of me?
The irony with both of these scenarios, of course, is that the choice that feels more risky in the moment is nearly always the choice that will lead to a better outcome. Having the courage to take creative risks is essential if you want to make art that touches people. Audiences, after all, don’t want to read a book or watch a musical where the author hasn’t gone deep, or where she always does the expected thing. Audiences are moved by depth, passion, vulnerability, and the unexpectedly satisfying.
III. The Courage to Share
In his memoir Honest, Abe: Is There Really No Business Like Show Business?, Abe Burrows describes sitting in the audience at the Broadway premiere of Guys and Dolls, for which he wrote the libretto.
Despite being an extremely successful comedian, on opening night he was so terrified that he lost all sensation in his body. At one moment he looked down and realized that he literally could not feel his wife holding his hand.
His book made me grateful, because it let me know that I wasn’t crazy. I read it after having a similar experience at the opening of my first musical — and it was at a Fringe Festival, not Broadway!
Burrows’s fear is related to the third kind of courage that’s required of writers: the courage to put our work out there. And I’ll be honest: this is something I really struggle with. I don’t like being criticized, I don’t like being “wrong,” and I desperately want people to like me. So, every bone in my body is usually struggling against putting something I’ve written out there… especially if it’s vulnerable, takes a strong stand, or is likely to piss somebody off.
And yet…the work that could provoke those kinds of reactions is often the work that I most need to write. For me, having the courage to share what I’ve written requires me to have the same kind of courage I needed to start writing. Once again, it’s about being willing to listen to that still, small voice, to believe in myself, and to have faith that even though people will disagree with me, perhaps call me names and dislike me, it’s going to be OK.
After all, not everyone needs to like me. Someone will always think I’m wrong. When I’m able to sit and actually listen to it, criticism can often be really helpful! On the other side of the equation, just because somebody criticizes me doesn’t mean that they’re right. Or, as a wise wag once said, “What other people think about you is none of your business.”
Courage Transforms Our Fear
When you practice, do not entertain the hope that you will wipe out all the negative things in you. Please don’t! … If we know the law of transformation, we know also that it is possible for us to transform garbage back into flowers.
– Thich Nhat Hahn, Meditation Teacher
Whenever we create something with purpose, fear seems to be part of the bargain. Why is that? I’m not sure, exactly, but I think it’s related to something a Brazilian ballet teacher of mine once said.
“You have butterflies in your stomach?” he told our class. “That is a good thing! Use those butterflies to make a great performance! If you didn’t have butterflies, you shouldn’t be dancing!”
The “no pain, no gain” school claims that we need to conquer our fears. Maybe that’s a good way of turning frightened young men into soldiers, but I don’t think it takes us very far in the creative process.
When we sit down to write, and when we’re afraid, we’re not called on to eliminate our fear. Instead, our task is to take the energy of that fear and transform it into something that can be of use to others. That is the alchemy of writing.
When we find the courage to make that happen, one step at a time, to write the words that are sleeping within us, we have the power to transform both ourselves and the world. When we summon the courage to write, we teach ourselves how to turn our butterflies into dance.
