writing habits

I have been trying to be more disciplined in my writing habits. And it's been really hard! Because yes, I love writing -- so much so that I'm crazy enough to go for a somewhat impractical arts degree in it -- but I don't always love the discipline of sitting down and trying to fill blank pages.

I tend to write in spurts, ten minutes here, a half hour there when I'm feeling really good about it, over and over again. But it's not really working. I feel the need to sit down and write for longer periods of time, to really get into a writing project. A couple days last week I went to cafes and made myself sit down and type. (The writing process is always helped immensely by a latte and a bagel, after all.) But the idea that's been on my mind of actually scheduling writing time -- making myself show up for a certain amount of time each day, like a job -- is making me really nervous.

Why? When writing is and has always been my "thing," the thing that I've always done and always loved, that I say I want to do with my life? Why don't I actually want to show up and do it? I think it's probably fear. I have so much anxiety about being a writer in the future -- will I ever be published, will I "make it," ever get recognition -- that it's choking the joy of writing itself. And that is pretty sad.

Now the question is: how to make the anxiety shut up so I can sit down and write for more than a half hour at a time.