How to Reduce Writing Anxiety and Generate Limitless Ideas

Steal My Dinner Party Planning Strategy

Dear friends,

For me, writing in public is like planning a dinner party. Both situations overwhelm me.

For years, I wrote in private. It’s like cooking alone, just for me. Writing for myself generates almost no anxiety. But writing in public spins my head in circles? Why? What is it about publishing on Substack and Medium that makes me feel uneasy?

As a writer, my mission is to serve other people. My goal is to share ways to add more self-compassion to their lives.

But here’s the problem: Public dinners and public writing employ an outside-inside approach to the initial idea-generation phase. I try to guess what the outside world wants, “What do my guests want? What foods would delight them? What do my potential readers want? What problem is my target audience grappling with?”

Only then do I look inside me to unearth wisdom that best addresses that outside want. (Or I scour through all my earmarked cookbook pages to assemble the perfect menu for the dinner party.)

As a result, I hunger for people to find value in what I create. This is because this outside-inside approach fixates me on the goal of pleasing and impressing other people. I turn needy. I yearn for people to gush, “Wow! That hit the spot! How did you know what I was craving? You’re so talented! I’m signing up for more!” These desires and expectations flood my mind before I’ve even identified an idea to write about.

Do you have similar worries about writing online? If you feel anxious about sharing your creations on the internet, the following approach may help you.

An Inside-Outside Approach

Now, I use an inside-outside approach. When identifying topics for my articles, I ask myself, “What challenges am I currently experiencing? What advice can I give myself?” I remind myself: “I have great taste. If I find my wisdom useful, someone else is bound to find it helpful too.” When I write something insightful to me, I’ll be less bothered if no one raves about it.

By pleasing myself, I’ll be less needy for validation.

I won’t be consumed with counting claps, comments, and compliments. I’ll see value in what I offer even if no one voices any affirmations to me.

Dinner Party Planning Strategy

Before I wrote my first online article, I suffered from self-doubt and analysis paralysis. Then, I remembered my friend Gretchen’s dinner party planning strategy.

Ten years ago, I had called Gretchen, “Please help! Next week, I’m hosting a dinner party. I have no idea what I’ll cook. There are so many people coming. How can I possibly pick a menu everyone will like?”

Gretchen suggested, “Cook your favorite food. Trust that you have great taste. If you love the meal, someone else is bound to enjoy it too.”

Whenever I host a dinner party, I apply the inside-outside approach to the menu selection process. If I cook something that brings me joy, I’m less bothered if no one raves about the dinner. By pleasing myself, I’m less needy for validation. I don’t fixate on tallying compliments or tracking guests who say nothing. I don’t worry that people dislike what I produced.

I see value in what I offer even if no one voices any affirmations to me.

Self-Esteem Benefits

When I apply an inside-outside idea-generation process to writing, I nourish my self-esteem.

If my self-esteem is empty, I’ll doubt my value and I won’t write. If my self-esteem is famished, I’ll devote my attention to begging, “Please feed me praise. Please tell me my writing has substance. Please tell me I have potential as a writer.” Anything anyone says or doesn’t say will be hoarded to fuel my self-esteem instead of my writerly craft.

But if my self-esteem is full, I can focus my attention on improving my writing skills and output.

With a sated soul, I’ll have energy to gather clues from any feedback I receive or from the lack of comments on my articles. I can look for themes in people’s tastes. “What do people relish? What is bland? Where can I spice up my writing? What is coming off as too strong?” 

Your Turn

To apply the inside-outside approach, set aside fifteen to thirty minutes. During that time, follow the below steps to identify your past challenges and solutions:

1. What topics are you interested in? List them. Examples could be relationships, investing, or creativity.

2. Pick one topic and journal your answers to the below questions.

3. What is a challenge you faced in [your selected topic]? Here are examples: What is a recurring challenge you faced in your relationship with your spouse, mom, sister, best friend, or supervisor? What was a challenge you faced when you first started to invest? When you reflect on your writing journey, what were the biggest challenges you faced over the years? Which challenges were so big that you might have stopped writing altogether?

4. What steps did you take to overcome your challenge? The steps could be new habits that you implemented or mindset shifts that reframed your situation.

For step 4, it helps if you treat your writing process as a vehicle to move from point A to point B in your mind. Point A could be confusion or anxiety, and point B could be clarity or inner peace.

For example, for investing, how did you move away from a place of feeling overwhelmed with all of the choices for investment companies and types of investments? How did you move your mind to a place of clarity in which you identified your initial investing strategy?

Often writing allows us to untangle the jumbled mass of information clumped in our minds and explain it in a simple linear way to other ourselves (and other people.) With an inside-outside writing approach, our finished articles become souvenirs of our inner journeys.

If you doubt the value of what you write, remind yourself: If the advice worked for you, it may be useful to someone else.

Best wishes with your writing,

Jenny