I read the words – Embrace what You Fear – somewhere recently and I do apologize to whomever it was that wrote them; I wish I could give you credit. The idea of this post didn’t pop up right away. My mind tossed the sentence into the back and chewed on it for a while.
Embrace What You Fear – that can mean a lot of different things to different people. My neighbour – after several beers – will tell his story about being at a professional development training day where a person brought out a large boa constrictor and asked, “Who wants to hold it?” My neighbour is terrified of snakes and wanted to bolt out of the room, but for some reason he stayed and yes, he, eventually, held the snake. I’ve seen the photo. You can easily see the terror on his face. But, he did it.
Image by John Bergman from Pixabay
As this is a writer’s blog – how does this embracing of fear relate to an author? I could say – we live in fear. Not from war or disease, but from words.
Image by 2211438 from Pixabay
Words are our life and sometimes they don’t flow freely. We can stare at a blank screen for days. In the end, we have very clean houses, but still blank pages.
When the words do come, then there is the terror of – is this crap? How crappy is this? This is beyond crap! Delete! Delete! Delete! Trying to make a simple sentence like – the cat is black – not sound crappy can send a writer into a tail spin.
A lot of authors have a built-in editor who peers over their shoulder and moans at every word/sentence written. As if there is no word good enough to put on paper. I had an author friend like that. She wrote fabulous stories, but agonized over every word. Note – she wrote – past tense. She is a writer – no more.
Then there is the fear of public judgment. The book has been through the trials of pre-publishing and that magical day happens – published. There is a moment of a joy then – what if no one reads it! Likes it! What if they hate it? What if I’m a total failure!!!!!
Yea, there is a lot – A LOT – of fear to embrace being a writer. What if we don’t embrace it?
Then books don’t get written. Stories are kept in the back of our minds and not shared. That is a sad notion.
Writers must embrace their fears and dig deep and write their stories – deep life altering stories to happy fun filled ones.
But there is one step more. We must also accept bad reviews. Not everyone will like our work. Getting a bad review hurts and it is embarrassing. Yes, I have had bad reviews. I share one in a writing class I teach. I love watching the faces of the people as they hear my book get ripped apart.
Bad review for my first book
1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money.
I had an extremely difficult time finishing this book. At no time did the writing style, plot, characters or anything else really get my attention. In fact it's been less than a week and I can't even remember their names. It won't be staying on my reader to take up space.
Did that bad review hurt? Hell, yes! It was my first book and my first bad review. Now, I laugh at it. When I get a bad review, I breathe deep mumbling to myself a bunch of snide comments about the reviewer’s intellect then mollified, I move on.
Is the fear of another bad review going to stop me from writing another book? No. My muse may leave me. The words may dry up. But it won’t be fear that keeps me from writing.
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