Before We Learn to Be Afraid of Writing

Greer Sabin supporting writing activities at summer camp.

August 12, 2026

“That’s stupid.”

That particular phrase, or ones like it, reverberated in my head for much longer than I would like to admit. No matter how hard I tried to overcome those judgments, for years, every time I sat down to write, I could feel them sneaking their way back in. 

Staring at the blank page, my thoughts would initially pour out, until inevitably, I stopped myself. Unable to move forward. Criticizing the words almost as quickly as I wrote them. 

Distrusting my own voice for years, I found other ways to work with words while giving my writing the Heisman. I kept that up for as long as I could. And then one day, I just couldn’t. Walking away from a stifling teaching career, I began listening to the advice I had given to hundreds of students: Follow your interests and passions.

These days, I am attempting to do just that while also listening to my intuition, pushing past the fears, and staying open to new possibilities.

My most recent discovery came from an unexpected source: a group of eight-year-olds.

Last month, I was invited to a local camp to support students with persuasive writing. Surprisingly, it made me nervous. I had never worked with the littles. After years of working with high school, college, and adult writers, I preferred the complexity that comes with age. I wasn't convinced eight-year-olds could engage with the kind of writing that interested me.

I doubted their abilities to conceptualize large ideas, and worried I would be bored with the simplicity of their thinking.

But by the end of the week, I discovered there is something truly magical about working with children who haven't yet learned to be afraid of their own ideas.

Give an eight-year-old permission to imagine something, and they simply go for it. Without questions, without hesitation, without voices telling them their ideas are stupid.

That week their project was to prepare a “marketing campaign” for their invented business. I was there to help them navigate how to use language persuasively. 

Within no time, their entrepreneurial world included a magical jewelry store, a backwards car wash, and something called Cat Lemonade. 

The sort of businesses that can only exist when you still believe anything is possible. 

At no time did anyone stop to ask whether Cat Lemonade was a viable business model or point out the challenges of washing cars backwards or question the logistics of infusing magic into jewelry.

The businesses existed because someone imagined them. Reason enough.

Watching them thrive, I started ruminating on how much changes occur between the age of eight and adulthood.

Somewhere along the way, many of us become afraid of writing, or more accurately, afraid of not getting it right. And we lose the fun along the way.

I know I did.

Some of that fear came from criticism I received when I was still figuring out what kind of writer I wanted to be.

Words flung at me decades ago found their way into my internal voice until I could no longer distinguish between my own thoughts and those thrown at me. 

Working through The Artist's Way, (Julia Cameron’s iconic manual on creativity), I stumbled upon Cameron's insights regarding the damage criticism can do to a developing artist. I immediately recognized myself.

Maybe that’s why watching the campers' enthusiasm felt so significant. The confidence in their voice and imagination is not one I often experience when working with older writers. Theirs was pure and unwavering.

They were still in that wonderful place where an idea can simply be an idea and curiosity is reason enough to follow it.

I was their age when I fell in love with writing.

Before I even knew what an audience was, I simply loved reading and telling stories. 

Over time, I began trusting myself less and less. Choosing to listen to all the other voices in my head, except my own. Worrying how to spell the word before even finishing the sentence. Questioning the validity of an idea before exploring its boundaries. Obsessing over likes and algorithms.

I learned to edit myself before I even began and in the process, I lost the joy of writing.

But these kids weren't there yet; hopefully, they never will be.

Maybe that's why watching them, totally engaged, made me pause. At that moment, I realized I came to camp to teach them something about writing.

Instead, they reminded me of how much I had forgotten.

Writing begins before the rules.

It begins with curiosity. With imagination. With having something inside of you and wondering what might happen if you just put it on the page.

There is something extraordinary about meeting writers near the beginning, when imagination comes easily and possibility hasn't yet been crowded out by self-doubt. When writing is still joyful.

Watching those kids stand in front of the room, presenting their final project, proud of their writing and themselves, I found myself hoping they could hold on to that feeling of joy that writing for fun brings.

And if one day, years from now, they find themselves staring at a blank page with a voice whispering, That's stupid, I hope they will remember what it felt like to write before they learned to be afraid.

And they'll write anyway.

And now I will, too.