I’ve got such an urge to write, right now… but I keep running up against a block: Do I write fiction, or nonfiction?
Part of me feels like I should be writing fiction. “It’s what will sell“, my mind whispers. And, then another voice in my head says, “Besides, you can’t write nonfiction or you’ll come off as hypocritical, or stupid.”
Of course, I don’t want to write just to make money. I want to write because it’s almost an innate need — I love to write. But, that little nagging voice likes to remind me that we need money pretty badly, right now, and maybe I could help out the family by selling my work. Foolish thinking, of course, because it’s very difficult to make a living as a Writer — or, so I’m told.
The other part of me desires to write nonfiction. This is my strong-suit, I would say. It comes more naturally to me than fiction does; it’s not much of a struggle. But, of course, that little critic says I can’t write nonfiction because I’d try to write about weight loss, and I’ve not yet had (lasting) success with that, so I’d be a hypocrite. Or, because I’d try to write about spiritual matters (stuff related to the Christian faith), and my faith isn’t strong like that of the other Christian authors, out there, who are already published — again, a hypocrite. Or because, if I do write about faith, I’ll come across as not knowing what I’m talking about, and will therefore look stupid or uneducated. 
I feel like, if I attempt to write nonfiction, no one will care about what I have to say. My work won’t sell, because there are better works already out there on the subject I might write about. Of course, this feeling stems from the fact that, in real life, I don’t feel listened to — I often feel that no one cares what I have to say, as they give me physical cues that they’ve stopped listening when I’m talking. So, what’s to say that I can actually write a book and find someone who’ll care to read it?
These are all silly excuses, though, right? I need to silence my inner critic and just do what I love… which is to write. And, I should take a leap of faith and write what I know, which is nonfiction. If it comes easy to me, and is where my passion lies, then I think I need to follow that, and say “screw it” to my inner critic.
You just never know, right?
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Edited to Add… After I wrote & published this post, I went blog-hopping… and I stumbled across this quote over at the “Two Writing Teachers” blog:
And by the way, everything in life is writable about
if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the
imagination to improvise.
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
— Sylvia Plath
Yay!
