There’s a document on my computer I haven’t opened in eight months. I know exactly where it is. I could find it in probably three seconds. But every time I think about clicking on it, something in my chest gets tight and I suddenly remember I need to do literally anything else.
Sound familiar?
I finished that draft last spring. Sixty-two thousand words. A whole story, beginning to end. And then I closed the file, told myself I’d let it rest for a few weeks, and proceeded to avoid it like it owed me money.
This is a fear I don’t hear writers talk about enough. Not the fear of the blank page. Not writer’s block. The fear of what we’ve already written. The terror of facing our own work and discovering it’s bad. Or worse, discovering we have no idea how to fix it.
I’ve been sitting with this fear lately. Trying to understand it. And I think I’ve learned a few things worth sharing.
Here’s how it usually goes for me. I finish a draft and I feel… something. Relief, mostly. Maybe a flicker of pride. I did the thing. I wrote the whole story.
Then doubt creeps in. Usually within a day or two.
What if it doesn’t make sense? What if the ending falls flat? What if I read it back and realize I’ve been fooling myself this whole time?
So I don’t read it. I tell myself I’m letting it rest. Gaining perspective. Being smart about the revision process.
But weeks turn into months. And the longer I wait, the scarier the draft becomes in my head. It stops being a document and starts being a judgment. Proof of whether I can actually do this writing thing or not.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on a Word file.
I’ve been thinking about what the fear is actually about. And I don’t think it’s really about the draft being bad. I think it’s about what we believe a bad draft means about us.
If the draft is messy, we’re not real writers. If the story doesn’t work, we wasted all that time. If we can’t figure out how to fix it, we don’t have what it takes.
These thoughts feel true when you’re in the thick of them. They feel like reasonable conclusions based on evidence. But they’re not. They’re just fear wearing a logical costume.
Here’s something I had to remind myself recently. Every writer I admire has drafts they were afraid to reread. Every single one of them. The fear doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you care about the work. It means the story matters to you.
That’s not a weakness. That’s the whole point.
Part of what keeps me away from that draft is the narrative I’ve constructed around it. I’ve convinced myself that opening it will be this dramatic moment of truth. That I’ll read the first chapter and either feel validated or crushed.
But that’s not really how revision works, is it?
Revision is slow. It’s patient. It’s reading a scene and thinking “okay, that’s not quite right” and then sitting with it until you figure out why. It’s not a pass-fail exam. It’s a conversation with your past self about what the story needs.
I know this intellectually. Getting my nervous system to believe it is another matter entirely.
A few weeks ago, I tried something small. I didn’t open the draft. That felt like too much. But I opened the folder it was in. Just sat there with the file name for a minute.
Then I wrote down one thing I remembered liking about the story. One scene that felt alive when I was writing it. One line of dialogue that made me smile.
That’s it. That was the whole exercise.
It sounds almost silly when I describe it. But it shifted something. The draft stopped being this monolithic thing I had to conquer and started being a story I’d written. A story with parts that worked and parts that probably didn’t. A normal draft. A fixable thing.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve opened it since then. I haven’t. But it feels closer now. Less like a monster in the closet and more like a project I’ll get to eventually.
If you’ve got your own scary draft hiding somewhere, here are a few things I’ve been trying.
Stop calling it “the draft.” Give the story its name again. It’s not a test you’re avoiding. It’s a story you wrote. Treating it like a story makes it feel more approachable somehow.
Write down what you remember enjoying about the writing process. Not whether the scenes are good or bad. Just moments that felt fun or surprising or interesting while you were in them. Reconnect with why you wrote it in the first place.
Set a tiny goal for first contact. Maybe you just open the file and read the first paragraph. Maybe you skim the chapter titles. Maybe you read the last page just to remember how it ends. You don’t have to do a full read-through on day one. Nobody’s asking you to.
Remind yourself that finding problems is the point. A messy first draft isn’t a failure. It’s raw material. The whole purpose of revision is to find what isn’t working and make it better. That’s not a catastrophe. That’s just the job.
Here’s what I suspect is true about my scary draft. It’s probably not as bad as I’ve built it up to be. And it’s probably not as good as I hoped it was when I finished it.
It’s probably just a draft. With strong moments and weak moments. With scenes that need cutting and scenes that need expanding. With a structure that almost works but needs some adjustment.
Normal stuff. Fixable stuff.
The fear wants me to believe that opening the file will reveal something unbearable. But I think what it will actually reveal is work. Just work to be done. And work I can do, if I’m patient with myself.
I’m starting to think about fear differently these days. Not as a stop sign but as information. When I’m afraid to engage with my own writing, that fear is telling me something. Usually that I care about this story. That I want it to be good. That it matters to me.
That’s useful to know.
Fear also tells me where I’m making the stakes too high. When I’m treating a draft like a verdict on my entire identity as a writer, the fear gets loud. When I can treat it like just a story that needs revision, the fear gets quieter.
It doesn’t disappear. I’m not sure it ever does completely. But it becomes manageable. Background noise instead of a siren.
I want to be honest with you. As I’m writing this, I still haven’t opened that eight-month-old draft. I’m still circling it. Still building up my courage.
But I’m going to. Soon. Maybe this week. Maybe tomorrow.
And when I do, I think it’ll be okay. Not because the draft will be perfect. But because I’ll finally stop fighting the fear and start doing the work.
Do you have a draft you’ve been avoiding? One that feels too scary to open? You’re not alone in that. We’ve all got files like that hiding somewhere. And maybe the first step is just admitting they scare us. Naming the fear out loud.
What would it take for you to open yours?
