Apprehension

When beginning to write the actual text of this work I've been working on working on, a weight attaches to the motion making words appear. At the end of the rope pulling down against the emergence of words on the page is fear, plain and simple, of not being good enough. I think there's a passage in 2666 about this fear. It coexists with confidence in one's ability, with fantasies of grandeur, with knowledge and skill, with excellent planning, with sloth and distractibility. It is a sort of valence, an electrical charge that makes me slightly more likely to do one thing than another. It is the well-spring of doubts, legitimate and irrational. There's a good deal more to fear than fear itself; it cannot be banished, it can only be directed or ignored or worked with and through.

I worry that nobody will value what I write. Join the club. Keep writing.