F is for Fear

I was going to do a post on something more mundane like ebook formatting, but the comments in one of last week’s posts convinced me to step back a bit and deal with this subject: fear.

Fear is huge, especially for writers. It lies at the heart of what we call writer’s block, and is probably the number one thing holding writers back from taking the leap and publishing their work. It doesn’t matter how many options are open to you if you’re frozen so much with fear that you can’t take a single step.

I don’t know how to deal with the crippling fear, because I’ve never really struggled with it. I do have a lot of other fears, though–just not the kind that stopped me from doing anything. Here are some of the fears I’ve dealt with at various points in my writing career:

Before I wrote my first novel:

• That I would get to the end of the story only to realize that the whole thing was crap.
• That my writing was hackneyed and clichéd.
• That I would never learn how to express in words everything that I wanted to get across in a story.
• That I was wasting my time and all of my work would come to nothing.

After I’d written a couple of novels and decided that this was what I wanted to do for my career:

• That I would never make enough to make a living at it.
• That I wouldn’t be able to find a day job, or that my emphasis on my writing career would consign me to dead-end jobs all my life.
• That I no girl would ever want me because I couldn’t offer enough stability to raise a family.
• That I was wasting time with any particular work-in-progress because agents and editors would obviously reject it.
• That my career was doomed because agents and editors wanted vampires and werewolves, not the kind of science fiction I was writing.

When I first decided to self-publish:

• That I would burn all my bridges the moment I clicked “publish.”
• That all of my writing friends would shun me.
• That my books would fall into obscurity and never climb out of it.
• That someone would steal my books and publish them under their own name.
• That something would happen to sabotage my career before it got started.

And finally, some fears that I struggle with now:

• That my books will suddenly and inexplicably stop selling.
• That everything that’s worked up to this point will stop working.
• That my next big release, Sons of the Starfarers, will flop.
• That my career has hit a ceiling, or will at some future point, making it almost impossible to grow.
• That health insurance, self-employment taxes, and other regulations from the federal government will place such a burden on me that I won’t be able to keep my head above water.
• Online bullying and internet lynch mobs.
• Drive-by one-star reviews from people who’ve never read my books but have decided for some reason to target me.
• Above all else, that I’m not working hard enough.

Looking back on them now, most of these fears seem ridiculous. Even the ones that I struggle with now seem largely unfounded.

But fear is fundamentally irrational–it comes from the animal part of our brain and often can’t be reasoned with. I can tell myself all day long that these fears don’t make sense, and still find them creeping back to haunt me. So how do I deal with it?

I can think of three major ways:

Fun

When you’re having fun, fear goes from this awful, horrible thing that’s holding you back to a thrill-inducing sensation that gives you a rush. Fun things are often scary, but they’re scary in a good way. Without the fear–without the risk–you’d never experience the rush that makes it fun.

Case in point, wingsuit gliding:

Self-publishing isn’t nearly as scary as wingsuit gliding, but it is fun–lots of fun! Every time I hit publish, I get a little rush, to the point where it’s now like I’m addicted. I just want to publish all of the time, because it’s so much fun to put stuff out there! I can’t possibly write enough to keep up with that desire. And every time I sell another book, or get another review, or find out that I’ve been mentioned in someone’s blog, that same rush comes right back to hit me. It’s awesome!

Friends

Not all fear is of the positive kind, though. When my fears threaten to overwhelm me, it can be helpful to have friends. They don’t have to be writing friends, though it certainly helps if they are–they just have to be interested enough in me and what I’m doing to genuinely listen. Knowing that someone is there for you can really make a difference.

I know that a lot of writers are more introverted than I am, but just because you’re introverted doesn’t mean that you’re averse to having friends. A true friend is someone who can relate to you in your own peculiar way, even if that way is a bit off-putting to others. A lot of times, it’s not anything the friend does that helps, it’s simply knowing that there’s someone.

Writing can be a very lonely art, so I think it’s important to consciously surround yourself with a support network of people who care. Most of the ‘networking’ I do as a writer is just that–making new friends and keeping old friendships alive. It isn’t about getting ahead so much as making sure that there are others there with you.

Faith

The opposite of fear is faith–faith in your books, faith in yourself, and faith in God or a higher power. At the risk of flirting with a topic that many consider taboo, I will say that my faith and spirituality have helped me to deal with some of the hardest fears. When you have faith that God approves of the course your life is taking, and that He is lifting and supporting you, it does so much to boost your confidence that no fear can overwhelm you.

Aside from any spiritual aspect, you must have faith in yourself–that you are capable of accomplishing great things, perhaps even the impossible. So much of fear is self-defeating that you have to stand up for yourself, because if you won’t stand up for yourself, who will? This is why writers are often such neurotic bundles of egotism and self-depreciation. The egotism is partially a defense mechanism against all that self-defeating fear.

But faith is more than egotism–it’s a confidence that runs so deep that it’s not incompatible with humility and meekness. If you always have to be right and can’t accept any criticism, your writing career–indeed, your entire life–is going to be a massive struggle. It’s better to cultivate faith than it is to feed arrogance.

Lastly, you need to have faith in your books: that the story you’re working on now is a story worth telling. For me, this is the hardest kind of faith of all. There comes a point in writing every book where I feel that the story is crap and wonder whether I should just toss it out or rewrite it from scratch.

When that happens, I’ll either force myself to push forward or lay the project aside until I can look at it with fresh eyes. It can be hard to know which way is more appropriate, but usually I’ll start with the first, and if that doesn’t work, then move on to the other. In both cases, though, I do all I can to build my faith in that particular project and lay aside any doubts or fears. And in almost every case, when I finally get through and write ‘the end,’ I find that those fears were unfounded.

So those are some of the ways I’ve learned to deal with my fear. How about you? What are the writing fears you struggle with, and how do you deal with them?