Fear Is a B!%@h

It happens every so often.

I want to work on something, be it a short story, a novel, or even a blog post. As I crack open my notebook or click on a file, the immediate and uncontrollable urge to do the dishes, work through my mountain of laundry, or do just about anything else hits me. My bathroom is never as clean as when I have these moments. The idea of working on this thing is an enormous stressor, and my snack drawer often suffers the brunt of this.

I used to think of it as just being lazy—we were all trained to look not wanting to produce for any reason as laziness—and I would try to combat it with a pep talk in the mirror. Sometimes it worked, and I’d get at least a few minutes of effort out of it. Most times, I’d get back to my desk and feel the weight of the pressure I put on myself. It took several years to realize the truth.

I was scared.

Robin Sharma's quote

Any artistic endeavor that ends up for public consumption is up for public judgment. Will they love it? Will they hate it? Will they even see it? Questions like that pop up all the time for me. And if you, dear reader, do anything creative, I bet they pop up for you too). Ultimately, at least for me, those questions are a smokescreen for a nasty, insidious little bugger of a notion.

Am I good enough?

Those words will mess with you, and fear of the answer can stop whatever you do in its tracks. But once I figured out the question that I was afraid of, I sought to answer it. Here are some of the answers I have come across.

1. The first draft of everything is $#!+. It’s a quote famously attributed to Ernest Hemingway, and it will humble a perfectionist. But there’s a universal truth to this one, and that is polish comes with practice. Write. Rewrite. Rewrite again. Your second effort will be better than your first, and every subsequent attempt will be a little better than the last. Once I embraced that, it got easier to quell the fear because the first try was only the first try.

2. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of done. Sometimes a work is finished. You think you can shine it up some more, tweak this or tighten that. But after a while, every effort gets you the same result, and while it’s good, it’s not perfect. Well, perfect doesn’t exist. There’s always a small flaw somewhere. And that’s fine. Sometimes done is done, and we have to accept that. It’s still a hard thing for me, but I’m trying to embrace that idea.

3. No one does it alone. I always hear that writing is an incredibly solitary thing to do. There’s some truth to that, as we spend hours and hours at our desks, locked away from society. It’s worse if you’re like me and always worry if you’re good enough at it. When you do that, you’re hesitant to show off the thing that you’ve locked yourself away for months to create, that you poured your heart and soul into while missing social engagements. And you hide this stuff because what if they hate it? Or worse, what if they simply do not care? That’s a notion we should break ourselves from because the reality is no one does this alone. There are writing groups, online support networks, even family and friends who will listen to you. And if you don’t have someone to bounce a story idea off of, or to reassure you when you feel like torching your laptop and never writing again, you do now. Seriously. Please shoot me an email, and I’ll help you. The point is, doing this in a vacuum will only echo your worst thoughts about your work in your head.

4. Not everyone will hate it. Earth is home to 7.4 billion people, give or take, each with an individual brain and, in some cases, meticulously curated tastes. It is statistically impossible for everyone to dislike your work. I mean, for all the hate the Fifty Shades series gets, it still sold 35 million copies in the US alone. It’s possible—likely, even—that something you create will be someone else’s favorite thing.

5. I’m still learning. Writing is a craft, full of apprentices and no masters. That is to say, it’s an evolving skill set that grows with your experience in both life and craft. I’ve been writing fiction since I was a teenager. I’ve completed dozens of short stories (and looking back, the early ones were not good), published two novels, and written millions of words for private and public consumption. Every word I write makes me a stronger writer. Every book I read teaches me something. And every time I started, finished, or quit a project, I took a lesson away. I’m learning, you’re learning, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Continuously learning to be a better writer or artist does not make you a bad one.

Nowadays, when the fear hits, I find a mirror and ask myself the question I’m most scared of. Am I good enough? The short answer is yes, and it took a while to get there. But there are longer answers, even more than the ones I’ve listed.

And then, some days, I just want to play X-Box.

If you’re dealing with this question and the fear it espouses, feel free to chime in. If you’ve found other answers, also, please comment. And if you’d need support or encouragement for something you have going on, let me know!

#fear #writing #process #enough #motivation