Many of us have gone through difficult events in our lives and felt called to write about them. If we’ve experienced personal transformation through a healing journey, writing our story and sharing it with the world can become part of our healing. It’s one of the last pieces that needs to click into place in order for us to fully process those past difficult events and finally move forward.
So, much of the time, we need to write our story for ourselves, first and foremost. However, we also know that our story could help others. We want to share our story because we want to share the wisdom of all we’ve learned with people who are currently going through something similar and need help.
However, it’s also common for big fears to come up for writers when they think about sharing the story of the difficult events they’ve experienced. Feeling terrified that others may judge your writing is a very real fear for writers. We might be afraid that others will judge our writing as “not good enough,” or that we don’t truly have the writing skills necessary to write the memoir or novel that describes what we’ve gone through in life. We might also fear that similar stories have already been told, or that we will experience backlash from family and friends, who may not believe us or may not want to hear what we have to say about things that went on in our families.
All of these fears are the same fear, and that’s the fear of judgement. There is a way to get past this fear, and I talk about it in the video below:
I’m teaching a new class called Write to Heal and we’re going to be working with all of these issues. If you’re thinking of writing a memoir or autobiographical novel based on difficult events in your life (or maybe you’ve already started this kind of project), then this class could be very helpful. We’ll be covering:
The unique challenges writers of difficult memoir face
How to work with a fictional character who is based on you (and everything that comes along with that)
How to write your story in a way that’s sustainable and healthy for you as the writer
How to get through writing about difficult events without fully re-living the pain of them
How to take care of yourself during the writing process with this kind of work
Registration for this class opens on July 14. If this sounds like something you need right now, be sure to SIGN UP for my newsletter HERE to get all the updates, and be sure to SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel HERE to get the next video in this series. You can contact me with any questions about the class here.
I would love to see you in this class!
Lauren Sapala is the author of The INFJ Writer, The INFJ Revolution, and the creator of Understanding Yourself as an INFJ Writer, an online video course for INFJ writers who struggle with traditional writing methods. You can get a free copy of her book on creative marketing for writers by signing up for her newsletter HERE.
