I did not invent the title but I find it suitable. It is the name of a movie I saw recently. I thought to myself. Gosh, this is the curse I am under, myself. I have been trying to write lately and I feel like a fitness trainer trying to ballet. I write everyday at work. I write emails, I write reports. I write some pretty incisive evaluations and quite sharp project reports. And yet, ask me to write about a memory or an idea, and I stare at the screen and chew my words endless into few pathetically long and unnecessarily complicated sentences. When the writing gets the label creative in my mind, alarm bells are pulled and panic strikes. Suddenly, all the grammar rules rush into my head and all the words needed to tell the story rush out. Grammatical dilemmas consume my thoughts: “What is the subjunctive of ‘to be’? Does English has subjunctive? I thought it did. I thought it was a rule. Where is that dictionary. Wait, chat GPT will know. Oh yes, I see there is present subjunctive and past subjunctive. Interesting. Wait! What did I want to say. Hmmm!” And so it goes, hours of mulling over obscure grammatical issues which would barely excite a linguist come in between me and my story. Because you see, when I will write it, it needs to be good. To move you. I do so little creative writing and I take so freaking long, that it better be worth it. I have it all in my head, and then: poof! An idea bloomed in my head that what holds me back might be fear. It is the fear of doing bad and fear of doing good. The person that will finish writing will be a different person than I am today. And I do not think I am ready to meet her yet. Who will I be without my fear?
Is there some other dragon waiting in the shadow, which I would have to defeat when my fear is small?
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