If you never became a writer and had to ask yourself why — had to sit down and identify what happened that prevented you from fulfilling that dream — what would appear on that list?
There are plenty of reasons people who want to be writers never make it there. Fear is one of the most destructive — especially because most of us don’t often realize that’s what it is at first.
Fear Is So Powerful You Don’t Even Realize It’s Affecting You
Humans — that’s us! — are wired to fear the unknown. It’s a survival instinct; what we don’t know might hurt us. Fight, flight, freeze might mean the difference between making it through the night in the middle of the woods in the middle of winter and, well … not.
We’re so used to being afraid that we don’t often recognize it’s fear standing in our way. It may be common for writers to fear things like rejection, failure, being misunderstood … pick your nightmare. But it may appear on the outside as something else, such as laziness, a lack of motivation, or disinterest.
Most of our writing roadblocks are rooted in fear. And the only way to clear those roadblocks is to confront our fears.
To Conquer Fear, You First Have to Name It
This all begins with giving your fears a name. Which requires, unfortunately, sitting with yourself and your thoughts and being honest about what’s scaring you the most. That, in itself, is terrifying. I know because I’m also confronting a lot of my fears surrounding never publishing an original novel. Never getting my stories out there. Wondering if I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I had, somehow, tried harder.
So — what are you afraid of? That no one will ever read your writing? That people will read your writing but hate it? That people will read your writing and, holy heck, maybe even like it?? There are a million things that might terrify you when you think about your prognosis, if you will, as an aspiring writer. Pick out a few. Give them a name. Sit with them. The more time you spend with them, the more you might realize that not all of them are quite as scary as they’ve seemed.
Learn to Write Despite What Scares You
Believe it or not, that second step might actually be the hardest part. Confronting your fears face-to-face is the part many would-have-been successful writers never get past. But it’s an essential part of your journey. Once you know you’re afraid of rejection, you can then make the choice to write anyway — even if rejection is in your future. Which in some aspect, it is. For all of us.
Writing — despite the terrifying unknowns associated with it — will always come with challenges. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes to name your fears, tuck them away while you write, and hope for the best. Time and practice are the only way forward. Write scared. Do it often. That is your way through.
Meg Dowell Writes 