There’s a lot of pressure that comes with writing online. “What will people think? Am I doing it right? What if someone disagrees with me? Will I even like what I wrote a few months from now?”
Nicolas Cole • The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention
I had this obscure fear of putting myself out there, and I began to feel that it was holding me back—from getting people to read my work, of course, but potentially also from even writing in the first place. I had somehow internalized this idea that to seek attention, to seek an audience was craven and base; if I did so, I was debasing the pure and... See more
I couldn’t handle any criticism, no matter how well-intentioned, and sharing my songs or playing live simply terrified me, since any rejection of the material felt like a direct rejection of me.