This is my life

Oh, I'm a great believer in both the Suzuki method and reading, reading, reading! I think, actually, that reading is part of the practice of writing; learning how other people put words together so you can find your own way. But I also think that it's a much higher level practice. To equate it to music for me, you start to listen to other performers and recordings after you have enough basic skills to recognize what they're doing, and enough repertoire under your belt to be able to understand the pieces. There's a whole separate post on music theory that I will probably never write, but which would dovetail nicely with reading in relation to writing.

On the other hand, I find your note about fear of failure, anxiety, and criticism absolutely dead on. If you read through the comments, they're full of fabulously talented people who ran into roadblocks, self-imposed or otherwise, that kept them from realizing their talent.

I think practice can help with that. One of the things that my teacher said to me is that we need to practice correctly - play it absolutely perfectly, every time. If you need to play it slow at first, that's okay, just play it RIGHT every time, and then you're practicing how to do it right. If you just play it, you're practicing how to do it WRONG as much as you're practicing how to do it right, and then it's a matter of statistics, you know? (It's late - I'm not sure that I'm making sense here.)

Yay writing practice! I'm working on a community - I'll definitely post something when I get it together.