I know what you’re thinking: she still exists? And pulled enough words together to write a blog post? Crazy, right?
Where do I begin this? A few years ago, I managed to actually write a novel. The words flowed and it was glorious (the process, not the book). I thought I had figured out how to finish projects. WRONG. I’ve not finished a single thing since then (blog posts don’t count).
Maybe it was because of the depression. Work stress. Medicine suddenly not working. Too many things on my mind. I’ve toyed with idea after idea. I plot and take notes. When the point of writing comes, I’m “bored”. The desire to write the story has left and I hop on the idea train and start all over. Only problem is, these other stories stay on my brain. At first, I thought it was because it wasn’t the story’s time to be written. That may be right some of the time, but what was the cause for everything else?
Today, while productively procrastinating, I found the answer. Weeks ago, a tweet about Susan Dennard’s website and writer resources piqued my curiosity. It’s like this woman crawled into my brain and put into words all the questions I’ve had. She made me feel “normal” with her methods (which are so like mine it’s eerie) and that writer’s block is real (THANK YOU!!!!)
There, amongst the writerly goodness was a post called From F.R.A.B. to fab. Fear-Related Artistic Block. I read through the symptoms and realized this fits my problem to a T. Rather than paraphrase, I’ll let you read it for yourself.
Which brings me to the real reason I’m writing this: accountability. I hope by sharing my fears, it will help in my befriending them. Not to mention others out there who might benefit from her posts.
So, here goes, my fears:
I fear failure. Of any kind.
I’m not good at anything in my life–there’s nothing I’m meant to do with my life.
I’ll never get it right/perfect and people will rip me and my work to shreds.
Everyone does better at this than I do. Everyone writes better stories than I do, why even try? I’ll never be as good as them.
No one will like my stories.
This is my dream, what if I suck at my dream? What do I have then?
I didn’t write this post or show you my fears to have you tell me I’m silly to have these fears. It’s obvious to me that I need to dig deep and find a way to get past them or as Susan says, to befriend them.
What about you? What fears do you have? Or have you gotten past your fear? How did you do it?
seeredwrite 