Fear

This post was actually inspired by a chapter from Wrede on Writing, a craft book from Patricia C. Wrede that my dear friend, Journey Bloomfield, recommended to me. And that chapter from Patricia C. Wrede, talked about fear. Fear as a writer.

Because if you do think about it, we writers are scared of lots of things. I certainly am! Even for indie authors, who don’t have to worry about rejection from agents and publishers, all us writers deal with fear at some point in our writing journey.

Now, I can’t speak for all writers. In fact, I’ve no idea if this is only me! But when I first started writing, I wasn’t scared. I know that sounds really weird. Some people might ask me, “Weren’t you worried about bad reviews?? Your book not being good enough??” But the truth is, no. I wasn’t. Because back then it was only me and my story, curled up in a little writing shed and with me just typing away at it. I knew nothing about publishing, nothing about editors or reviewers or book bloggers.

It was just me and my book.

But now that I’ve gotten further into my writing journey, I somehow feel as though I’ve gained more self-doubt and fear. Again, this likely sounds ridiculous. But it’s true. Since finishing the Enchantria series, I’ve always had this sort of fear of “What if my book isn’t good enough? What if my readers don’t like this new book? What if this book does terribly? What if, what if, what if?”

Not the good kind of what-ifs.

In fact, I have a whole list of things I’m scared of as a writer:

• My book not being good enough.
• My readers not liking my new book.
• Not being able to write another book ever again.
• The eternal fear of “What if I maybe wasn’t meant to be a writer?”
• The eternal fear of “What if I’m not supposed to write middle-grade, despite the fact that I love it and feel at home with it. I like to write darker, more intense stuff, what if that means I’m supposed to write YA, not MG?”

And lots more.

Right now, I’m scared of my work-in-progress, Island Keepers, being too long. I’ve heard over and over again in the publishing industry that middle-grade is only supposed to stretch up to 60K, with a teeny bit of leeway for fantasy. That kids hate reading long books nowadays. That nobody wants long books.

I’m 75K words into Island Keepers, hardly done, and there’s no way this book could be split into two. (I’ve tried, actually… It did NOT go well…)

It’s a standalone, sure as the sky’s blue. (Or, well, silvery-gray right now since it’s blanketed with clouds at the moment of writing)

And as I’m writing, I’ve just had this crippling fear of the word count. So crippling that just yesterday, I rushed the story before my internal alarm started shrieking and going off and letting me know that, “No, this isn’t supposed to happen yet!!! This needs to happen first, and you can’t just rush the characters to that point because of the dratted word count.”

But as I was re-reading Wrede’s book, she said something that just made me realize something.

That yes, fear is crippling. But that one trick to set the fear aside is to just… stop worrying about the future. To just focus on the present. Don’t let yourself worry about when this book will be ready. Just focus on getting the next sentence down. And the next. And the next. Until you have a completed book.

Then you start working on cutting all the unnecessary bits, without worrying about the next step.

Now, these aren’t her exact words of course, but it’s what I took away. And she’s right. All the things I’m worrying about — they’re all in the future. The cutting, the final word count, the formatting…

All in the future. All things I shouldn’t be worrying about right now.

Shannon Messenger also did say something that reminded me of what Wrede had said. In an interview, she once said that her tip for young writers was to just focus on writing their book. That lots of people want to get to the publishing stage. But that in reality, you really should treasure the time that you have with your book, before it’s out in the world — the time where it’s just you and your book and you can have fun. I think she’s right. Very, very right.

Because right now, I’m still in the drafting. I’ve only shared this book with some of my best friends who are also writers and who I trust to see this messy, yet-to-be-completed story. Friends who I know will provide feedback to make the story better, but not the sort of feedback that makes me worry about the future, if that makes any sense.

I’m still in that stage where it’s just me and my book. And really, I probably shouldn’t be worrying about the future, since that sort of ruins the whole point of this stage being just for you and your book. I just need to take it step-by-step and trust that the next step will be there once I get to it.

To be honest, it’s hard. It’s one of the reasons why I both love writing and why I get eternally frustrated with it. Because it feels like I’m just muddling through. I know what step I’m currently one, I have the faintest glimmer of the next step. And the next is just foggy. I cannot see it. I don’t know what direction I’m going in. Or at least, I may know what direction the story’s going in, but I’ve no idea how it’s going to play out.

For me, so much of writing is just trusting the story. I can’t ever write a book with an entire plan. I’ve tried it. If you’re a planner and it works for you, then that’s fantastic — keep planning and doing it the way that works for you! But I’m a pantser. And I’ve found that I can only ever write a story once I’ve surrendered control to the story. Therefore, I don’t know where this story is going to take me. But I know that it will be right for this story.

But the fact that I don’t know is absolutely maddening. And I think that’s where part of the fear might come from — human brains always seem to fear the unknown. We want to be in control of everything. It makes us feel safe. But for me, storytelling is a wild, wild place that I absolutely cannot control. I can try, but I’ll fail. Heck, I have failed! It is a place that just has to come from deep, deep within my heart, and there really is just no way I can do that unless I throw the plan out the window and trust the story.

And so that’s what I really have to do. To just trust the story and take it step by step by both painful and joyful step until I get an actual story.

What about you guys? Have you ever dealt with fear as a writer and if so, how did you deal with it? (Or am I the only one who feels this way and I’m just blathering on about something ridiculous while others give me strange looks…?)

Isabelle