Even after writing for more than 20 years it’s common to allow yourself to question everything you are, everything you’ve ever written and those topics you’re currently considering … especially when they hit closest to home.

You can look back at published works and kick yourself, knowing you could have done better. You can read comments from readers that (correctly or incorrectly) describe the state of your soul and worry you’ve revealed too much.

And you can compare your own works with those of others and realize those other writers know bigger words, they’re more poetic or descriptive. You can kick yourself for these things and wonder if you’re good enough to continue, or you can do as Brandon Keith says and simply be you.

This post is a great reminder. Even as a published author I find myself looking at the time and wondering how I’ll ever finish my current book. I read the text and think, this is the closest book to my heart I’ve ever written, and it’s true. It’s really me. Will I be judged? Will I show myself as a fool? Will I piss people off?

In the end, I realize I have to move forward, to be true to me, to be authentic and vulnerable in my writing, and to write through those times I don’t know what to write … to “write about why [I’m] stuck or feeling lost,” to allow that therapeutic writing to pull from places deeper inside me. That’s when I do my best work, when it breaks loose the words and ideas that most need to be said.