Tips for anxious writers: Practice and performance

In the previous tip, I argued for the use of exploratory writing—writing whose purpose is to explore ideas, not writing that helps you communicate with other people—and I’m going to follow up on that notion here to focus on the emotional difference between practice and performance—between writing to learn from the process and writing something that other people will see and evaluate. One of the main anxieties that people face is about how their work will be received, and if that can be put aside, even for a time, then writing anxiety can be reduced and writing productivity increased.