The fear and magic of writing

I'm revising lightly as I go through the manuscript again, but it's not easy to face the truth of what's on paper. 

I put this off for months, and each morning I'm still putting it off, not wanting to find out if I failed, not wanting to find out if I'm a failure. 

This fear (of being a failure) runs through my veins. It's what causes my need to procrastinate. It's what keeps me away from the manuscript for days and weeks, from working on it for months, from improving it, from enjoying it. 

As soon as I manage to overcome this fear and return to the manuscript, though, I find myself absorbed by it, drawn back into that world, pulled back into the spaciousness of my imagination. 

Maybe that's what is so scary--leaving reality and its solid footing for the imaginary world, worried I'll lose myself there and never return? 

It's funny (I realized this morning as I was working on the revisions) the way holding the pen in my hand roots me to reality and takes me into the imaginary world simultaneously. 

Isn't it interesting how I can enter an imaginary world and stay rooted in this one, the "real" world, at the exact same moment?

My pen is like a talisman. Its mysterious properties let me go in two different directions at once. 

I can write my way into the world of imagination while writing words that appear on the page and remain physically present in this world, this reality. 

Maybe this is the magic of writing. 

It lets us inhabit two (or more) worlds at once. 

And maybe it's the magic of reading, too.