Why people can't write.....Let's abolish "Can't"
Posted by Mike (mike) on Dec 27 2007 at 7:34 AM
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"I'd love to write a book,� but� I can't write."� "I'd love to be a writer, but I just don't have any ideas."

How often do people subscribe to these views? I come across them all the time. So it's got me thinking in an NLP sort of way, about the true meaning of the language we use. Taking the first statement:

.....but I can't write.....

Does that mean the person literally has no ability to pick up a pen and write? Do they have a physical or mental defect which stops them writing? A kind of writer's cramp perhaps? I don't think they mean this. That lovely word 'can't' of course covers up a battalion of meanings:

'CAN'T' =�� won't;� don't want to; did it once but never again; don't know how to start; don't have enough incentive to begin; fear of the consequences such as criticism or ridicule etc etc


I would like to start a campaign agains't the word 'can't'.� I would want to encourage people to say what athey really mean when they say this. More often than not, in my experience as a writing coach, that little word means 'I have no confidence in the quality of what I write and I am fearful of rejection by colleagues, peers or editors'. In this context 'can't' means something very real: 'can't face the consequences of failure'. There are two things going on here then: the first is a built in assumption that a writing project will fail and that the remification of that failure will be hard to bear. By abolishing 'can't' I would (if I were the Word Czar) encourage people to face up the true barriers and blockades to their writing: very well imagined fear of failure and its dire consequences. Of course, most of this (if not all) is in the mind. Our brains are very good at creating doom-laden scenarios of failure and damaging criticism. The result is inertia.

So if I hear people say 'I just can't write', I will ask them (in future) to rephrase that statement without using that horrid little word.