I think we’d all like to believe that we don’t care whether anyone pays attention to us.  We’re heroically forging our own path, and if other people don’t care about what we’re doing or think it’s important, that’s just their loss.  But if we’re honest with ourselves, I think we’ll see that the reality is [...]

I was struck by a passage in a book I read recently called The Writer’s Portable Therapist, by psychologist Rachel Ballon.  Ballon recalls a time when she asked a client, a children’s book author, to make a list of the fears she had about her writing.  The client came back with the following:
1.  I’m afraid [...]