You're torturing yourself for nothing

Why the story you’re afraid to write is never as scary as the fear of writing it

Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

Seneca wrote it almost 2,000 years ago:

He was talking about everything. But he could have been talking about writing.

Why do I say that? Because the story you’re afraid to write? The scene that terrifies you? The truth you don’t want to put on the page?

How often in your own writing journey have you looked back after avoiding writing? Or creating time to write and finding it impossible, that…

The anticipation of writing it is worse than actually writing it. The dread. The avoidance. The weeks you spend NOT writing it because you’re scared of what it will require.

That’s the suffering. The imagining.

And when you finally sit down and write it? When you actually face the thing you’ve been avoiding?

The reality is never as bad as the fear.

Take it from someone who’s lived this truth all the time, even right now as I come up with every excuse under the sun about being in school full-time to not be able to write my own stuff…

The fear of writing it is the prison. Writing it is the release.

Today, I want to talk about why we suffer more in imagination than reality. Why the anticipation of writing the hard scene is worse than actually doing it. And how to stop torturing yourself with dread and just write the thing.

What Falls Away When You Face The Reality

The catastrophic imagination falls away

Your brain is a catastrophe generator.

It takes the simple task “write the scene where the character admits the truth” and turns it into:

“If I write this honestly, I’ll expose myself. People will know this is autobiographical. They’ll judge me. They’ll think less of me. I’ll regret putting this on the page. It will haunt me forever.”

That’s imagination. That’s suffering.

The reality? You write the scene. You feel uncomfortable for 20 minutes. You get it down. And then you move on to the next scene.

The catastrophe never happens. The exposure you feared doesn’t materialize. The regret doesn’t come.

You just wrote a scene. That’s the reality.

Seneca understood this when he wrote about how your mind creates suffering by imagining all the ways something could go wrong. But when you actually DO the thing, the imagined catastrophes rarely happen.

Write the scene. Face the reality. Watch the catastrophic imagination disappear.

The endless dread falls away

When you’re avoiding writing something, the dread is constant.

You wake up knowing you’re avoiding it. You sit at your desk and work on other scenes because you don’t want to face THAT scene. You go to bed feeling like a coward.

Or is that just me?

The dread doesn’t take a day off. Avoidance doesn’t bring you peace.

Every day you don’t write it, you carry the weight of knowing you’re scared. Knowing you’re hiding. Knowing there’s a scene you’re too afraid to face.

That’s the suffering. The imagination of how hard it will be. The dread of eventually having to write it.

But when you actually write it? When you sit down and just DO it?

The dread ends. You wrote it. Done. Move on. The anticipation was worse than the execution. The fear was worse than the reality.

Avoidance as torture falls away

You tell yourself you’re protecting yourself by not writing the hard scene. That you don’t have to go there in this story. Not yet.

But you’re wrong.

Protecting yourself from discomfort. From having to access difficult emotions. From confronting truths you’d rather not face. It doesn’t serve you as a writer.

All of that leads to one thing… torture.

Because every day you avoid it, you know you’re avoiding it. You feel the weight of your own cowardice. You carry the knowledge that there’s work you’re too scared to do.

The only way out is through. Write the scene. Face the discomfort. And realize that the discomfort lasts 20 minutes, but the avoidance tortures you for weeks.

The reality is temporary discomfort. The imagination creates permanent dread.

Stop torturing yourself. Write the thing.

What Becomes Urgent When You Stop Imagining And Start Doing

Getting it over with becomes urgent

When you understand that the fear is worse than the reality, something powerful becomes clear in your own writing journey.

You start to realize that the fastest way to end the suffering is to just write the damn thing. Not tomorrow. Not when you’re “ready.” Now.

Because every day you wait, you suffer. Every day you avoid it, the dread accumulates.

But the moment you write it? The suffering ends.

You feel uncomfortable while writing it. Maybe 20 minutes. Maybe an hour. And then you’re done. The scene exists. The fear is over. You can move on.

Getting it over with becomes more urgent than waiting for the perfect moment. Because there is no perfect moment. There’s only: still suffering in imagination, or done suffering because you faced reality.

The discomfort becomes temporary, not permanent

So, what happens when you finally write that scene that terrifies you? The one you’ve been avoiding for the entire three rounds of drafts and revisions now?

Yes, the one you’re thinking about right now.

You realize that the discomfort is TEMPORARY.

While you’re writing it, yes, you feel it. You access difficult emotions. You confront uncomfortable truths. You sit with feelings you’d rather avoid. But it ends. You finish the scene. You close the document. You walk away.

And the discomfort doesn’t follow you. You’re not haunted by it. You don’t regret it.

You just wrote a scene. And now it’s done.

The imagination makes the discomfort feel permanent. Like, once you start, you’ll be trapped in that emotional space forever.

But reality is different. The discomfort is temporary. You go there, you write it, you come back.

And you’re fine. And even better? You’ve not given us, your audience, a profound truth that we need to experience in your voice.

Writing becomes the release, not the prison

When you’re avoiding a scene, writing feels like a prison. Like if you write it, you’ll be trapped. Exposed. Vulnerable. Stuck in discomfort.

But when you actually write it, you realize: Writing is the RELEASE.

The prison is the avoidance. The dread. The daily weight of knowing you’re too scared to face the work.

Writing the scene is what frees you from all that. You write it. The fear ends. The dread disappears. The avoidance stops torturing you.

Writing becomes the key that unlocks the prison, not the prison itself.

Courage becomes easier than cowardice

Living with the fear takes more energy than facing it. Avoiding the scene every day. Carrying the dread. Feeling like a coward. That’s exhausting.

Sitting down and writing it? That takes 20 minutes.

Courage becomes the easier path. Because facing the thing ends the suffering. Avoiding it extends it indefinitely.

You think cowardice is the safe choice. The comfortable choice. But cowardice is torture. Daily, ongoing, exhausting torture.

Courage is temporary discomfort that ends the moment you finish the scene.

Which one is actually harder?

Why The Anticipation Is Always Worse

Seneca understood something about human psychology that most writers haven’t figured out:

Your mind is terrible at predicting how bad things will actually be.

It overestimates the pain. It catastrophizes the outcome. It creates suffering where none exists yet.

All those feelings that you’re not good enough, not worthy of writing success, of how no one will want to make you script or read your novel, they’re all wrong. They’re imagined torture.

The scene you’re avoiding probably isn’t that hard

When you finally write it, you’ll realize: This wasn’t as bad as I thought.

The emotion you were scared to access? You touched it. You wrote from it. And you were fine.

The truth you didn’t want to face? You faced it. Put it on the page. And nothing catastrophic happened.

The vulnerability you feared? You risked it. And the world didn’t end.

The anticipation made it seem impossible. The reality was just uncomfortable.

There’s a difference. And the difference is everything.

You’ve been torturing yourself for nothing

All those weeks you spent avoiding the scene. All that dread. All that fear.

You were torturing yourself over something that took 20 minutes to write and wasn’t even that bad.

Seneca was right. The suffering was in the imagination.

The reality was just work. Uncomfortable work. But work.

You could have written it weeks ago. Could have ended the suffering then.

Instead, you carried it. Fed it. Let it grow.

For nothing.

The Bottom Line

Seneca was right that we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

It’s like he knew what imposter syndrome was before all of us put a name on it.

He knew that the story you’re afraid to write is never as scary as the fear of writing it.

The scene you’re avoiding? The truth you don’t want to face? The vulnerability you’re protecting yourself from? The anticipation of writing it is worse than actually writing it.

Stop imagining how bad it will be. Stop catastrophizing the outcome. Stop carrying the dread.

Write the scene. Face the reality. End the suffering.

The fear is the prison. Writing is the release.

What scene are you avoiding right now? What are you suffering about in imagination instead of just facing in reality?

Drop it in the comments. What are you finally going to write instead of avoiding?

And remember, your story matters because you matter. And the scene you’re afraid to write is the one that will prove it.