Being Afraid (and Writing Anyway)

I am afraid.

I am afraid my writing will fail. I am afraid people will judge my work and find me lacking. I am afraid I am not good enough.

Fear is real.

Do you have the same doubts? Do you wonder what you are doing calling yourself a writer? Are you afraid the words won’t come out right this time? Does fear keep your story from getting started, from getting finished, from getting shared?

Here’s the truth, my friends: You are not alone.

And another truth: Fear does not need to define us and it does not need to stop us.

Fear is a normal. We fear fire, falling, and jumpy spiders for good reason. (Okay maybe spiders are a stretch, but still.) There is nothing wrong with fear itself.

But when we let fear hold us back from doing good? That’s when we need to examine ourselves and see what we can do about it.

So let’s take a closer look together at some of the fears common among writers.

1. We Fear We Aren’t Good Enough

When can we say that we are writers? Do you ever feel you aren’t quite good enough to deserve that title? Look around to see if anyone is accusing you of being a fraud?

There’s a term called “Impostor Syndrome” or “Impostor Phenomenon” which basically means an individual feels like an impostor, that they don’t think they deserve their titles or success. That even if the person has talent they don’t feel worthy. This term is credited to a 1978 article by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. 

Those experience Impostor Syndrome feel like they are faking their accomplishments and aren’t truly qualified. They are frequently afraid others will discover they aren’t really good enough.

Sound familiar?

Many of us experience this to some degree.

We don’t introduce ourselves as a writer because how dare we claim that title? We hesitate to talk about our current work in progress because we think it probably isn’t very good anyway. We don’t admit our dreams of publication, success, or bestseller lists because it seems too far out of our grasp.

We fear we couldn’t ever be good enough and so we keep ourselves from reaching for what we want.

I’ve done this.

I’ve hesitated before telling people I write, or I add qualifiers like “It’s just for fun!” and “Oh, when I have the time!” to avoid any real claims to being good. Because if I don’t tell people I’m trying then they can never laugh at me. I keep their expectations low.

But we can’t write our books in a box. It doesn’t work that way.

Somewhere along the way we need to be brave, shake off the fear pressing in, and show people what we’re working on. Whisper to our friend, “Actually, I’m a writer.” Add it to our bio on facebook. Whatever it looks like.

Confession time: Some of the impostor syndrome rose up when I was starting this blog. A blog for writers? How could I call myself qualified to set that up? Could I really help people? 

It can be easy to forget that we are qualified and capable. It’s scary to put ourselves out there.

But the truth is, we don’t need to be perfect. We don’t even need to be good at times! We just need to be doing it.

To look fear in the face and do it anyway.

We aren’t impostors.

The impostors are the ones who say they write but never actually do the work. But if we’re doing the work I say we deserve whatever titles we want to give ourselves.

So call yourself a writer and let’s do this!

2. We Fear Rejection

So we are writers (yeah we are!) and we’re doing our writing. And we run into another big fear.

Fear of rejection. *ouch* Yes, I’ve been there and it hurts.

This one is similar to the last only rejection comes when we show people our work. We give drafts to beta readers, to our moms, to our roommates to look over. Or we’re further along the line and submitting stories to contests or to agents or publishers.

And we fear that red pen all over the page. The “better luck next time” and “it’s just not doing anything for me.” The “this isn’t what we’re looking for” and “it needs more work.”

*ouch*

We’ve poured hours and sleepless nights and tears into these pages and you’re saying “better luck next time”??

Rejection is hard. I don’t need to tell you that.

But there’s a lot of rejection and hard reviews in the writing world. A lot of “constructive criticism” and comments handed back for revisions.

Authors need to be incredibly thick skinned.

I’m not thick skinned by nature. I care entirely too much what people think of me and take it far too personally.

But what if we can step back a bit? Learn to reframe the rejection, take it as part of the process? Isn’t that how we learn?

Writing is a process and rejection is part of it.

Instead of letting it get us down, let’s see what we can learn from it.

Let’s remember that our self worth is not tied up in our manuscripts.

Let’s celebrate the comments given because only now can we make our stories stronger.

It’s not about us, it’s about our story.

So let’s dig deep and hand the writing off to a friend for some review. The more we do it the easier it will get! And our stories deserve to be read.

 

3. We Fear We Will Fail

This is the big one.

We call ourselves writers. Put our writing out there for people to look at. We work and work and work. And…

What if it’s still not good enough?

This happens. We all have things we’ve failed at and it’s no fun at all. In our culture that is so driven by success, failure is practically the worst thing we could be.

But… is it really that terrible to fail?

Story time: My two little girls fail at things constantly. They fall down. They break things. They try to catch a ball and end up with it hitting their face. They try to jump and fall on their bottom. (It’s adorable actually. And hilarious. I try not to laugh at them too much.)

But this is how they learn.

They don’t give up when they fall. Actually they rarely seem bothered at all.

Because of course they fall. Of course they drop things, fail at writing the letter A, struggle to pull their pants up correctly.

Failure isn’t the end of things unless we stop trying.

Failure isn’t a big deal guys. It means we’re trying.

I don’t want to never get better in life. I don’t want to never try.

So that means I need to be okay with failure.

Have you ever envied people who are willing to look stupid? Who are having fun and doing new things and don’t care if they make a mess of it all? Let’s be that person.

Let’s try new things and put ourselves out there.

Let’s be so unafraid of failure that we can have the freedom to submit our novel to our dream publishing house. Let’s ask for writing advice from people we admire. Let’s write our hearts out and continue to grow.

Let’s be afraid and do it anyway.

We don’t have to prove anything.

There is freedom in failure.

And tomorrow we can try again.

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Which of these fears (or something different!) is the biggest factor you see holding you back in your writing? What do you do to overcome it?