F is for Fear (brrr!) #atozchallenge

Oh boy, we’ve gotten to F. So, I’m going out on a limb here, and am going to write about the big F… FEAR. (brr!) In this case, I’m focusing on the fear that surrounds the act of writing novels rather than the emotion of fear as it shows up in stories.

One of the biggest things I’ve found with trying to get myself writing seriously is that I have a lot of fear surrounding it. So much. I’ve written many first drafts, and yet I was frozen with anxiety that none of them were worthy of being edited into novels for submission. Or, I believed that my writing style and skills were not up to publishing standards yet.  All of these beliefs and anxiety were directly tied to fear.

Fear is one of the dark sides of writing, or really putting yourself out there in anything that you care about. Fear of failure. Fear of ridicule. Fear of rejection. And even… wait for it… fear of success. I know, that sounds totally ridiculous, but fear of success is definitely a thing and it fits right in with the rest of it. If you succeed, what happens next? Can you duplicate that success? What if you write an amazing novel, and sell it, and everyone thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas, and then you sit down to write your next novel and all that comes out is *makes raspberry noises*. You know what I mean. How scary is that?

I am not even close to success, so right now I’m focused entirely on my fears of failure, rejection, and ridicule. Easy peasy, right? Heh. Not so much, but I’m still writing my novel, because it just has to happen. Am I dealing with this fear? Well, I suppose I am in that I’m not letting it stop me anymore. I’m still afraid of these things. I just am going to keep on writing anyway!

How do you deal with fear? As a writer or in whatever you care most about?