It’s 13 hours before deadline and I’m just starting my column. As Editor-in-Chief, I’m supposed to set a good example, but here’s my dirty little secret: I suffer from writing anxiety.

For those of you who don’t know what writing anxiety is, you’re lucky. Writing anxiety, or writer’s block, is the inability and hesitation associated with putting pen to paper, or in 2012, fingers to keys. For the longest time I struggled to understand the oddity of my love and hate for writing.

Last week I volunteered my time to go to a workshop in the Cartwright Learning Resource Center called, ‘Writing Anxiety and Writer’s Block, Identifying Causes and Exploring Strategies.’

It was my first time attending a workshop that served no other purpose beyond improving my well being as a student. I honestly didn’t want to go. I sat down in a room with seven other people and we discussed the causes of our anxiety and what we can do to help the situation. I’m sure many of them were like me, looking for a cure.

In fact, I learned I wasn’t lazy; I just felt an enormous pressure to put out a product that would impress people. The whole experience was refreshing and reminiscent of therapy for word nerds. For the most part, people were there because they actually seemed to care.

Some of the strategies Michelle Detorie, a writing center teaching assistant, taught us involved free writing, the art of unloading every thought in your mind in an unorganized fashion. She also introduced the group to brainstorming in bullet points, neither of which I have attempted to execute thus far.

The workshop was conducted in two parts. Detorie interacted with the group to try to find out what our particular anxieties are and followed by addressing the issues using possible strategies.

There were a variety of different anxieties expressed by my fellow work-shoppers, but the most pressing seemed to be fear of an overcritical reader.

That means you!

I have found a new way of coping with the heart-stopping stress of attempting to appeal to a massive audience. I’m picturing you naked.

Who’s judging now?

I also learned that choosing journalism as my desired career, when I have a crippling fear of my writing being judged, does make me a masochist. But at least I’m not naked.

I wish I could say I’m healed. But dedicating 50 minutes of your time on a Tuesday afternoon doesn’t translate to instantly dissolving a lifetime of wordsmith woes.

The real question is: would I go back for another workshop? Writing hasn’t necessarily been easier, but it is nice to know that I’m not alone. What Cartwright offers for students is important. It’s good to sit down in a room with your peers and realize that you’re not alone with any of your study related issues; whether it is how to research or how to cite, you may just see me there.

The most important thing I took from the workshop is that having writing anxiety doesn’t make me an incapable writer or stupid.

Thank god.