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was willing to say what I real y thought even if
    it meant the loss of everything I believed I needed to survive,
    even if it meant pissing people off, even if abandonment was to
    follow. That was the day I let the razor hit my scalp. The day I
    made a first step in letting go of the idea that everybody needed
    to like me all the time. The day I stopped making nice and ac-
    cepted that the Steves of the world might never like me, and that
    I would survive without their approval.
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    T h e o P a u l i n e N e s t o r
    As it turns out, I was, in fact, a grown person who didn’t
    require the approval of my mother or anyone else to survive, but
    without writing, I learned, part of me would never have a chance
    to come to life. The story that I began to write that day was my
    own version of my life, the story we each have a right to tel , if
    only to ourselves. But it’s a right we must take; most likely no
    one will ever hand it to us.
    Like diving into cold water, writing requires some letting go.
    Writing requires trust: trust that words will find you, that the
    unknown will become known, that the mystery will be solved,
    that the story will find its arc, that you will find your story and your voice, that your voice will be heard, that you will be understood. But most of al , writing requires you to trust yourself, the source of the voice inside you that supplies the next word, the
    next line, the next idea. And until you can access some of this
    trust, you won’t be able to write the stories you want to write the way you want to write them.
    For some of us, the road to finding our own voice is a long one,
    because we’re not ready for the truth of the fact that the only way out is through. We don’t feel ready to see ourselves reflected back to us, to sit through a million competing thoughts—the static we
    must often endure before we final y find the station where our
    own voice comes through singular and clear, before we can write
    with abandon on a semi-routine basis, before we can press our
    vision past the block, past the half-finished story, past the rewrite, until final y we arrive at a finished piece of writing that is, in fact, a manifestation of our vision and that does, in fact, tell our story the way we want to tell it. So much encouragement and faith is
    required to write like a child and revise like a grown-up.
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    W r i t i n g i s M y D r i n k
    But it can be found; even if you have to stumble forward in
    blind faith, you can start down the path. You can sit through all
    the bad first drafts, revisions, and doubt. You can face all the
    places you’re sure you fall short and keep going. You can push
    past the doubt, the fear, and the part of you that’s afraid of wanting something this much.
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    T h e o P a u l i n e N e s t o r
    Try This
    1. As fast as you can, make a list of times when you could not ac-
    cess trust in yourself. Hint: Here’s what not accessing the trust
    looks like. You had a hunch and you didn’t follow it. You knew
    the relationship would fail but you started in on it. Your inner
    voice said, “Do it,” but you didn’t. Your inner voice said, “Run,”
    and you stayed. You watched TV instead of going to the party.
    You were ashamed. You said you “couldn’t” when in fact you
    just “wouldn’t.” You passed on the free plane tickets. When you
    had an idea, you batted it away. When you wanted something,
    you told yourself it was too much to hope for. The novel in the
    drawer. The unmade phone cal . The made bed. The unsung
    song. The words you didn’t say. The class you didn’t take. The
    questions that burned inside you but you wouldn’t ask.
    2. Write for five minutes without stopping about one of these
    times.
    3. As fast as you can, make a list of times when you were able to
    access trust. You