on Writing Forward:

Putting yourself out there isn’t easy. When you share your writing, you open it up to criticism. What if people don’t like it? What if it gets negative reviews? What if nobody reads it?

I share my writing all the time, thanks to this blog. In the early days, shortly after I launched Writing Forward, I would sometimes wake up in a panic the day after I’d published a new post. Had I said something stupid? Misspelled a word? Misplaced a comma? A few times, my fears were realized. I’ve published posts with typos in them, and I once spelled a famous author’s name wrong — in a title. Needless to say, I felt like an idiot.

But I kept going. I fixed that typo, and I moved on.

Here’s the thing: you’re going to make mistakes. Sometimes, a piece of writing that you thought was brilliant will turn out to be a dud. Other times, a piece you thought was dull will catch fire and go viral. Some people will like what you’ve written, but there will be others who don’t like it or don’t care to read it. You never know how people are going to respond until you share your writing.