Schneider, Pat. "Feeling and Facing Fear." Writing Alone and With Others. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

"Writing is talking. It is hunkering down around the cave fire at night and telling about the day. And however it may be disguised, fear is close to the center of the first stories we will want to tell" (3). As one of my students at Eckerd College recently said, "You mean I can't hide behind my characters (like I do) in fiction?!?" The fear of exposing your true self on the page, for others to examine and possibly judge, can be daunting.

This chapter was about fear and what might get in our way when we choose to write about ourselves: fear of the truth and what we might discover about ourselves; fear of someone else (what they might think of our writing, or that they might see an experience you've written about in a different way, and thus, think you're lying on the page); "scar-tissue" fears caused by grammarian teachers who didn't look at the content of the writing, but only the grammar; and even fear of success -- that our work might be published, and therefore public. All of these are legitimate fears -- I sometimes worry that I'm slow to finish my novels because I know how difficult it will be to get them published, and if I do, what people will think of my novels, both my professional peers as well as my friends and family.

However, the fears must be wrangled with and overcome, or at least understood, in order to write. Schneider advises that writers trust the process, not to get intimidated by their goals, not to allow others' points of view to have too much impact on the message we're trying to get across.