What's in a name?
Is 'anxious writer' really the name I want for my newsletter?
I sent a text to my friend a few weeks ago.
If I were to change the name of my Substack to something more positive (anxious being a negative word) - what would it be? I’ve been inspired by Laura Jane Williams who has called hers How to Build a Life - which suggests something positive. I’d like mine to be positive. And cosy!
I sent this out into the world and then forgot about it for a while. And then today, as I’m thinking of writing about the two query emails I’ve sent to literary agents this week(!), I scrolled back through my newsletters to when I wrote about submitting to agents:
WHY HAVE I...only submitted to three literary agents since finishing my book proposal in 2024?
Full disclosure: I wrote the title for this article and then picked my phone up to scroll for a good ten minutes because I was so reluctant to deep dive into it. This is a hard one for me to admit to and a hard one for me to delve into. After all, what does it say about me and my faith in my writing, my idea and the finished proposal if I can’t find the nerve to submit it?
Scrolling through the comments I came across this one by
, that I had neglected to respond to (apologies, Linda):I hear and identify with your fears - and procrastination. It is a painful place to be. I mentioned to a friend that I was following "The Anxious Writer". She suggested that naming oneself as anxious keeps a person stuck in that label. I tried to rationalise that you'd only used that title to attract readers to your Substack but she wasn't buying any of it! She continued to declare that words matter; how we name ourselves determines the outcome. Does this resonate at all with you?!! It did with me, and I'm rethinking how I categorise myself.
And I completely agree, words do matter. Especially those you label yourself with. And we can be really cruel to ourselves. How many times have you dismissed yourself with a phrase like, “I’m so thick/silly/stupid,” and so on?
I called my newsletter The Anxious Writer because that’s what I felt like I was for so many years. Also unconfident, procrastinating, self-sabotaging and lots more along that line. It was also named that because, like Linda said, I was trying to attract a certain type of reader to my newsletters.