Fear Factor

Last Wednesday, I attended my first Creative Non-Fiction writing class. I showed up giddy, super excited about that I was finally, finally doing this. I had been putting off pursuing my aspirations of writing for so long and pretending like it was something I would pursue later. In this case, later meant when I won the lottery and had loads of free time. The first step of this new endeavor was my blog, and this course was the 2nd step. I had been secretly counting down the days until the class began.

After conducting the usual roll call, and syllabus review we delved into the fun stuff. One of the first things we did, was an exercise during which we discussed why we wanted to write and answered a series of questions which elicited hilarious, creative responses from the attendees.

That’s when it first happened. I felt the blood rushing to my face, my heart started beating a little faster and I suddenly felt like I had walked up a few flights of stairs. (Okay one of flight of stairs, I’m not in the best shape at the moment) I knew that there were the physical manifestations of my feelings of inadequacy. But this was no time to accept defeat and I pushed myself to keep calm. However, when it was time for me to speak, I muttered, “Well I won’t be as funny as the person who just spoke before me.” There it was again the self-doubt and I actually verbalized it to my entire class. Ugh.

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