And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imaginati... — Sylvia Plath

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

Author: Sylvia Plath

Insight: There's something liberating about this, even if Plath herself struggled mightily with it. The point isn't that you should write about everything—it's that the barrier between "writable" and "unwritable" is almost entirely in your head. We convince ourselves certain experiences are too messy, too embarrassing, too ordinary, or too dark to put into words. But that's just fear disguised as good taste. The real creative work isn't finding the "right" subject; it's having the nerve to try. Self-doubt does something sneaky though. It doesn't just whisper "don't bother." It tells you that thinking about your hesitation is the same as being thoughtful or careful. You can spend years polishing your excuses into something that sounds wise. But there's a difference between healthy caution and the kind of doubt that prevents you from even starting. One protects you; the other paralyzes you. The "imagination to improvise" part matters too. You don't need permission or the perfect circumstances. You start with what you have—a voice that's yours, a story nobody else can tell exactly like you can. Everything becomes material once you stop waiting for yourself to be ready.

Source: Letters Home, 1950-1963, p. 257