Mark Tredinnick - The Little Red Writing Book-University of New South Wales Press (2006)

When we’re anxious, we lose our voice.We sound, on the page
as in life, like someone else, like someone we are trying to be, or
like no one at all.
But what is there to be anxious about?
There’s the fact that writing endures, whereas spoken words
pass. Writers get anxious because they know that what they set
down on the page and leave there can be read forever after—all
your triumphs and tragedies of construction get preserved for all
eternity. By contrast, a careless word or phrase uttered on the
phone or a false note struck in conversation can be put right in the
next sentence.When you speak, you can get away with umming and
ahhing and losing your way and finding it again until you say what it
is you discover you want to say. But when you write, no one will cut
you that kind of slack.You need to say what you mean to say—and
nothing else. Near enough’s not good enough.
That’s enough to scare the bejesus out of most of us.
But there are other anxieties—word limits; deadlines; the
feeling that you don’t know what you’re talking about; the fear
of making mistakes, of using the wrong words, of looking
ridiculous; politics (more on this later); bad memories of composition
classes from primary school; grammar phobias; the feeling that
you need to do more research; the certainty that you’re missing the
point; the fear that this has all been said before much better by
someone else; the fear of offending someone, of defaming
someone, of admitting something you’d rather not. Recognise
some of those? There is no end to the anxieties that storm the
writer’s mind.
The gaggle of anxieties can induce panic. And panic makes for
bad prose. If you’re feeling anxious when you write, your writing
will sound anxious. Somehow you need to overcome these fears and
write. Don’t panic—just learn to take care. Be alert, not alarmed!
Compose yourself so that panic does not compose your sentences
and put them in some hectic order.This is so much more easily said
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