I've been struggling with blocks almost since I began writing.  I've been embarrassed of my writing, felt my writing was no good, worried that no one was ever going to read it, and wondered why I bother.

I think most writers encounter these blocks - not just me.  Julia Cameron discusses the ways writers keep themselves from writing in her must-read book The Artist's Way. Even Virginia Woolf had to murder her "Angel in the House."

You're not alone if you have to struggle against yourself to create.

For some reason, in our society, it's okay for children to create out of the sheer joy of it, while the price of adulthood is turning one's mind to "adult" things - finger-painting not included.  Adults only get to create if they're very good or making money from it.

I've been fighting a long, hard battle since Day 1 in order to feel "okay" about writing, and I'd like to share some of those battles with you.

Block #1: Feeling Embarrassed of My Writing

My first block - encountered from about the age of 12 - was embarrassment.

Despite receiving encouragement and support from my parents and teachers, I felt furtive, almost guilty every time I wrote. Perhaps it was because, even then, I sensed that the fruits of a childhood imagination were not to be shared with adults. Adults didn't understand. They didn't know how to play imaginatively; instead they evaluated, read critically, and praised for effort rather than content. One glance by their judgmental eyes was enough to wither the tender blossom of my fantasies. From then on, I shared what I wrote with no one. I stuck it in folders in a wooden file cabinet given to me as a coming-of-age gift by my grandmother. I think most of it is still there.

Block #2: Unrealistic Expectations of Myself

The next block I faced was worthiness.

I was the stereotypical brainy student. I absorbed rules endlessly and applied them to everything I wrote with strict precision. No dangling prepositions or sentence fragments for me. My reading appetite was voracious: I read Voltaire, Henrick Ibsen, Rabelais, Benjamin Franklin, Emerson, Ayn Rand, the Koran, Will Durant's Story of Civilization in 11 volumes... I saw these great authors as my tutors in a world I intended to join. It was my destiny, no less, to join their company in the pages of high school English Literature textbooks.

The ego of youth knows no bounds - and thank goodness for that! Otherwise, young people would take one look at the heights that our great artists, inventors, and statesmen have attained and sadly conclude: "Impossible. I can't compete. I shall resign myself to life as a receptionist." (No offense intended.)

Although my yearning for greatness in the world of words spurred me on to greater and greater reading challenges, it didn't inspire the best prose. I wrote fantastical stories and poems that I wanted to think were brilliant but knew, in my heart of hearts, were crap. I didn't want to write if what I produced was amateur. It was either greatness or nothing. Unfortunately, that meant that the only brilliant works I wrote were in my head, where they could remain backlit by pride.

Block #3: Making Things Overly Complicated

I wish I could say that university cured my of my writing neuroses and sent me on my way with a portfolio of brilliant works, but it didn't. It only introduced a new block: incomprehensibility.

Nothing I wrote in college made any sense at all to anyone who wasn't in college.

To this day, my heartrate speeds up when I think about the years I wasted trying to be clever. Clever writing is, to use a vulgar term, mental masturbation. You think you're doing something brilliant, but the only person who thinks it's brilliant is the one who voted Ulysses as the 20th century's greatest written work. Let me give you a guideline here: if you read it and don't understand it, you're not supposed to conclude that the author is brilliant. You're supposed to conclude that the author didn't bother to make his/her work accessible to a wider audience. That's why literary fiction is difficult to sell and rarely sells past a few thousand copies, while authors like Danielle Steele and Dan Brown make millions.

Accessibility is important. If you don't understand what you're saying, no one else will, either.

I apologize to all you students out there who use incomprehensibility as a technique to confuse the people marking your work. You see, many clever students realize that if they make something sound clever enough - even if they have no idea what they mean, either - they'll get a good mark from their professor, who doesn't like to admit that he or she doesn't get it, either.

I was lucky: I cured my writing of incomprehensibility when I began tutoring shepherds in Spanish. Because of my lack of proficiency in the language, my speaking ability was reduced to that of an 8-year-old. Can an 8-year-old explain lactation curves? Yes, it's possible, but only if you become very, very good at explaining what you mean using the simplest words and metaphors possible.

Because I was speaking in my everyday life like an 8-year-old, my thoughts began mimicking my speech. Soon, I was writing in English like an 8-year-old and thinking nothing of it. Considering that a general rule of thumb for authors is target readers with an 8th grade reading level, I far exceeded expectations.

Block #4: Writing from the Mind, Not the Heart

Today, I write all the time. Writing is as natural to me as breathing. I no longer feel embarrassed of people reading my writing, as I know now the difference between writing meant for public consumption and writing meant to remain private. I've learned to write even when I don't feel like writing, and I have confidence now in the magic that happens when you let your fingers do the writing for you.

But there's one more block that remains for me to conquer: inauthenticity.

As a professional writer, I can write about anything - and I do. I often take on personas that will help me better reach my target audience. For example, when I write for an adult website, I try to put myself into the mind of a middle-aged man who's looking for that four-letter word starting with "p."  (Saying this will probably get me blocked from search engines.) It's not a comfortable place to remain for long, but it certainly introduces a different style and focus to my writing.

Now that I've got a little more time to write for myself rather than for an employer, I seesaw between my artistic and commercial sensibilities. On one hand, the artist in me wants to explore thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, the commercial writer in me knows that people will only read something if it's of some use to them.

What I've got to learn to do is feel okay about expressing myself, without my inner editorial censor leaping out and shouting, "HALT! No one will want to read THAT!"

I've got to have the confidence that people will want to read what I have to write, even if it wasn't written with purely commercial goals in mind.

I've got to feel okay about expressing my truth from the heart, even if my mind bombs my consciousness with corrections and objections.

Smashing Your Blocks to Smithereens

I'd like to say that I've swung self-awareness like a hammer and splintered those blocks into impotent shreds.

But they're still there, lurking at the edge of my consciousness, hoping to find me vulnerable on an off day.

Ultimately, we may not be able to defeat our blocks entirely, but we can thwart their purpose.  Creative blocks take great satisfaction in keeping you from completing your work.  All you have to do to defeat them is to keep on writing, and writing, and writing until you're done.

Let those fingers fly!