Mental Meanderings

Why I'm Afraid To Write...

I was enjoying a long catch up session in "Writer's Fallout Shelter"  tonight. The Shelter has lots of wonderful back and fourth on writing related topics between a wide range of experience. I always enjoy my trips in there and come away with a great deal of insight into the writing world as well as having had the opportunity to add my own POV to the converstaions. The topics are wide ranging but all writing based.

Anyway, one of the topics that game up was "Why are you afraid to write?" Talked about in the post, "Writing is scary"  . Holly Jahangiri and Lori Basiewicz challenged us to write an essay and I figured a stream of consciousness blog entry would do just as well. It's probably a topic I've covered in the past. It's definately something I've faced time and again but I suspect while many of my reasons are still the same today I'll have another opportunity to dust the cobwebs of my fears from the nooks of my mind and appreciate how they hold me back from the success I aspire to.

Why Am I Afraid To Write? I recently had to face this fear when Forge and I started working on The Flight of Torque. Every day my turn would arrive. I would be fired up, inspired, and eager. Then I'd sit there, frozen in fear, my stomach churning in anxiety, my breath fast and my mind spinning, leaping about, fluttering, and buzzing like a hive of bee's. Anxiety attack. I can't really understand it. It wasn't at that point a fear of success or even a fear of failure. I was staring at a blank page, fearing the beginning.

After we got started it wasn't as difficult but it continues to be haunting. I can procrastinate all day long out of fear of beginning. The blank page. I stare at it, put it aside and until I reach the point where I decide to put everything else aside, and just WRITE! It overwhelms me.

I suppose a great deal of it has to do with a lack of confidence. I know I have some fantastic ideas. Some brilliant concepts, masterful plots, intriguing charactions, all vying for room on the pages of what I write. A part of me quavers under a fear of ineffectualism. How could I possibly be the writer to manifest such wonderous things effectively? I battle this fear with the arguement that if I don't write them, who will? If I don't write them they'll never be written which would be more horrific them if I do a terrible job of it.

I'm afraid of not having the power to follow a project through. I'm afraid that I'll start a project and it'll be brilliant but that I'll never be able to complete it. I've done this in fact. I've got too many projects already running that if I start something new it will be another reason those don't get completed. I know I need to focus on finishing what's already going on in my life, in my head, in my work or nothing will ever reach fruition.

I'm afraid of writing something brilliant and not ever having the confidence in myself to know it's great. I'm afraid that even if it's good I'll beat it to death because I can't see how good it is. I constantly wonder if I'm destroying what works by overanalysing it all. That's one of the things that's holding me back from the second draft of The Dating Game. I hate it. The basic story is there but the rest, I hate, and I'm so afraid to pull it apart because I'm afraid none of it is salvagable. I'm afraid that perhaps it's not as bad as I think and I'm going to strip it to shreds editing it and make it worse then it already is. I'm afraid I'll never be able to make it any better then the crud it is now. I'm afraid I'm inept as a writer. I'm afraid the story just isn't there to support it and I really worry that I don't have the ability, the knowledge, the experience to make it a great story.

I'm afraid that if I do write something well and get published my expectations will rise to a new level that I couldn't possibly master. If I sell something then I'd have to continue to sell. If I make a real income from my writing I'd lose my pension and either have to continue producing and selling my writing at a steady pace or resort to getting a day job. I worry that taking on the mantle of writer will bring a degree of fame that will have people getting into my life. I'm afraid that I'll lose my right to remain ellusive and hide in my hermatige-like lifestyle. I'm afraid that to succeed I'll have to reach out and trust others, with my work, with myself, with my reputation and my money and my life. I'm afraid by opening myself in trusting others I'll be hurt, betrayed, abused, used, degraded.

I'm afraid people will tear apart what I put my heart, soul, sweet, blood and tears into for so many days and weeks of my life. I'm afraid that if people love it they'll want to produce something more of it. I'm afraid of having people change my writing. I'm afraid of having fans writing epic fanfiction about it and completely altering my character and my world and my concepts. I'm afraid of my works being turned into the inspiration for pornography and other sick fetishes (Have you noticed Harry Potter porn is on the rise?) I'm afraid that it could be taken into other languages and badly translated. I'm afraid someone will buy the rights to make it a movie and completely transform it into a mere shadow of itself (see Eragon rant below).

I'm afraid words will never do justice to the wonderous stories in my mind. I'm afraid I don't know enough about people in this world to write respectable, believeable characters. I worry that I have very little life experience and too much theory experience. I'm terrified I'll never find a niche to write comfortably in a specific genre or I'll get marked into a genre I don't want to write. I'm afraid I'll be judged by my writing and found wanting. I'm afraid people will hate me as a person simply because they disagree with what I write.

I'm afraid that I'll fail to express my point of view clearly. I'm afraid...

*sighs* You know what I've just come to realise? I'm afraid of living my entire life doing nothing because I'm always too afraid. Fear is a terrible deterrent to joy in life. I realise that everything I'm afraid if is beyond my control. There is nothing I can do about how people will react to what I write. There isn't even anything I can do about the quality of my writing. It won't improve by not writing. It's pointless to suffer these rediculous fears. It doesn't make the fear go away to know this, but it makes it easier, to push past them, and just go and write. Time to crank up Enya, blasting in my ears, and put words onto a blank page.