Happy Saturday, WriteByNighters!
Earlier this week my annoying
therapist posited that what keeps me from writing as often as I want to is FEAR.
I was all like "Fear of what?" and she was all like "Well, you tell me" and I was all like "Gee, look at the
time."
All writers struggle with writing-related fears.
Many of us fear failure: What if I work on my book for years and it never gets published? What if I work on my book for years and it gets published but critics and readers hate it?
Many of us fear success: What if I publish my book but it doesn't make me happy, content, satisfied? What if I can't write a follow-up and the pressure does me in?
And then we have all of these other fears. Do I have enough talent? Will my friends think I'm weird? What if I'm on book tour and someone in the audience asks me the difference between an en dash and an em dash?
The only way to start getting a handle on our fear is to identify it and acknowledge its presence.
That's the purpose of this week's blog post, in which we invite you to leave a comment detailing your main writing fear, and suggest that you take the time to encourage a fellow writer who's facing his/her own fear, especially if
it's similar to yours.
There's also an exercise that asks you to write while literally facing your fear.
Dig down deep, friends, and address your fears. Because then I can present them as my own when my therapist asks if I did my between-session homework.
