F is for Fear
There are many facets to the fear of writing. Even prolific writers can experience it in some form. There’s fear of failure, fear of success, fear of criticism, and even fear of not knowing where to begin. We fear reading aloud to a group and fear that we don’t have enough life experience to become effective writers. Perhaps our biggest fear it that we’ll invest all kinds of time and effort and little pieces of ourselves in our work but never get published.
Fear of failure is about behaviour, outcomes, and results. It’s not a personality characteristic. Even if what you write doesn’t give you the result you wanted, it doesn’t mean you are a failure. If you’re not getting the results you want, then you must do something different. Most people stop writing anything at all, and this guarantees they won’t be successful.
Fear of success comes when you don’t know if you can live up to your achievements. You feel that you’re not good enough or smart enough to keep writing or keep getting published. You don’t believe you can sustain your writing success. Success tests your limits and can expose your weaknesses, forcing you to face, and deal, with your flaws.
Fear can become a habit that destroys creativity, self-confidence, and dreams. But it’s much better to try and fail than not to try at all, not only because life is short, but no matter how hard you fail it gives you a leaping off point for your next project.
Fear immobilizes you. To combat your fear, take action. To overcome fear, you must act. You must be persistent. Successful people don’t just give up. They keep trying different approaches to achieving their goals until they finally get the results they want.
Remember, it’s all right to feel the fear, but push past it and write anyway.
5 comments:
I'm reminded of the mantra from Dume by Frank Herbert.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain
OMG, of course I have a lot of fears and of course, I've made a lot of mistakes and have to overcome with a few failures ... BUT I've also learnt to see those things as life experiences. You can learn a lot from these, and if it's only that one thing, how to avoid the same in future! If you try to win a little positive side out of failure, failure itself loses some intensity! Hopefully enough not to be rigitd with fear!
Keep your heads up & happy writing!
Karin
P.S. P.S. Today I did a little exercise: F for Freewriting! Enjoy!
The thing about fear, and the thing I try to teach my son, is that each time you overcome a fear and beat it, the reward is confidence.
I'll just echo exactly what L.G. Smith said. :)
I think I'm the only one I've ever seen who comes to this issue and faces not fear of success or failure but of the actual process and its depths. As I mentioned on another blog, I can go deep into it and stay a long time. But then dread going back again.
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