Last week I wrote about having filed for bankruptcy in August. I think it was the only piece I have written about in a long time that I was afraid to write. I learned years ago that when I am afraid to write about something, I must go and write about it.

I believe that my skill in taking words and experiences and using them to make sense of the world for others, to prompt thought and stir emotion, is a divine gift – the creative spark that I use to feed myself and to free my spirit.

I think that is what writing and most creativity is about – overcoming fear to free our spirits, to find our voice, our place in the world.

I have been teaching writing in one form or another for more than 20 years, I love doing it, but it it is a challenging to do. Some people take to creativity quite naturally, others seem tentative and blocked, even crippled.  Some understand the worth of their stories, most people do not. Over time, I have come to see the devastating and ubiquitous impact fear has on the process of writing in particular, art in general, and creativity of all kinds.

At the moment, I am teaching nearly a score of people at different times and in different ways – it is a calling of mine. I have learned that some people are eager to learn and grow, and some are not. I have learned that many people are open to feedback and challenge, and many are not. I accept the good and bad, the responsible teacher never pushes a student farther than he or she wants to go, that never works.

We are the only creature on the earth who can decide to improve ourselves, to grow and change, to better our lives; who possess the creative spark, who can imagine things beyond the boundaries of our daily lives, and can help people make sense of the world.

One of my students is afraid her father will read what she writes.  So she writes about everything but that which is important to her. She rarely tells the truth about herself or her life. His very critical voice and cruel estimations of her remain in her consciousness, they are invisible handcuffs in her mind. I know this feeling.

Another fears her mother, ailing in a nursing home,  will be hurt by the pain she caused, so she never writes about the most powerful episode in her life – the abuse and criticism and painfully low self-esteem she feels, how she could never be the child her mother wished her to be. Another fears his brother, who is violently opposed to his writing about his abuse and threatens to never speak to him if he does.

Still others fear ridicule and failure. What if I am no good? What if what I create is no good, and people hate it?

I understand this. My daughter has been upset by the things I wrote about our family, so was my mother, my sister, my brother. I asked each one of them the same question: was it the truth? Was it what I saw and felt? Those are the only questions I ask about the words I write. I can’t say if the words are all true or not, or right or wrong, or if they reflect every other person’s reality. I can only say they are my truth and my reality.

Do I write everything I think? Do I share every secret? No, of course not. I do not write anything I know will hurt anyone, or that violates anyone’s personal sense of privacy. But I know if I tell the truth about myself, it will make some people uncomfortable.  That will happen if I am to be my authentic self.

One of my students won’t write about the impact money has had in her life – she has some – because she is afraid she might be robbed or seen as a snob. I have a student I’ve been seeing for three years who has written a page or two in that time, she is quite nearly paralyzed by her fear that her writing is not good and people may not like it. She dreads writing something some member of her family or her friends and neighbors will read and not like.  As a teacher, I feel like a veterinarian must often feel, there is so much fear and emotion about the process, you almost need a social worker to be part of the process.

Fear is a wall, a suffocating and windowless cell. It chokes creativity to death and starves the soul. We all take the leap of faith, if we wish to free our spirits, we close our eyes and jump. The rest is in the hands of the Gods.

I know countless people who won’t write on blogs because they might spell a word wrong or make grammatical errors. If they do try and write, they spend so much time proofreading and worrying they are unable to create much of anything. Fear kills many more books and painting that any publisher or gallery could.