I'm afraid to be good. Afraid to write well. It's a ridiculous, ludicrous statement. I hear you saying, What? You're afraid of what? It doesn't make any sense. Yes, it doesn't. It's that luminous cusp between an amateurish philandering with words and the mastery of language, that point when you can sense you're getting better, but you're not quite there. Yet. And the pressure to get there fast is insurmountable. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. It holds me back, this fear, it's unexplainable and debilitating and degrading. I don't feel like I can talk about this to anyone, it fills me with shame and self-loathing, especially because it's new and puzzling.

Where did this fear come from?