The Productive Writer: Write in spite of fear
"What if my book is drivel?"
"What if the editor sends it back with a resounding no?"
"What if I’m wasting my time?"
"What if I succeed?"
Some writers don’t accomplish much because of fear. I don’t mean accomplishment in terms of contracts, but just getting words on a page. The writer’s road is paved with potholes of insecurity, ready to trip us up. Or make us give up.
Those of us who’ve been writing for any length of time know that we’re capable of producing drivel. Deprive my brain cells of energy and sleep, who knows what might fly up onto the computer screen? The wonderful thing about drivel is that you can edit it. Maybe you’ll delete half of what you wrote, but a page of what looks like drivel is worth more than a glowing empty page (and spider solitaire minimized on the screen).
Fear can paralyze our minds and turn our thought processes to mush. We can make excuses, find something else to do (see spider solitaire above). An editor will never say no to work they haven’t read. And that means they’ll also never say yes.
Then there’s the whole fear that “I’m wasting my time.” The little games that come preinstalled on computers? Watching Match Game reruns? That’s time wasting. Every scene, every chapter, every book we write is an important lesson. Maybe it’s a lesson in how not to write. But the act of writing accomplishes more than reading all the craft books on your shelf. The second novel I completed (still unsold for good reason) took me a year to finish. A multi-published author offered to read the whole thing and share her thoughts with me. At the time, I didn’t recognize that her gesture was a wonderful gift. She read all 267 pages of hard copy, and handed it back to me with plenty of ink added. Said the beginning was pretty rough, but the end, well, much better. She could see the progression in my writing over the course of the year.
Maybe you think you’re wasting your time. But the learning process happens when we’re laying down those phrases, sentences, scenes, and chapters. Call it on-the-job training.
And success? Who’d be afraid of that? Plenty of people. To write in obscurity makes us battle one kind of fear, but once the contracts come, another sort of pressure presents itself.
The productive writer may know all these things, but the productive writer responds like this:
They write anyway. Productive writers hit their knees, then rise up and write. Even if they’re afraid.
"What if the editor sends it back with a resounding no?"
"What if I’m wasting my time?"
"What if I succeed?"
Some writers don’t accomplish much because of fear. I don’t mean accomplishment in terms of contracts, but just getting words on a page. The writer’s road is paved with potholes of insecurity, ready to trip us up. Or make us give up.
Those of us who’ve been writing for any length of time know that we’re capable of producing drivel. Deprive my brain cells of energy and sleep, who knows what might fly up onto the computer screen? The wonderful thing about drivel is that you can edit it. Maybe you’ll delete half of what you wrote, but a page of what looks like drivel is worth more than a glowing empty page (and spider solitaire minimized on the screen).
Fear can paralyze our minds and turn our thought processes to mush. We can make excuses, find something else to do (see spider solitaire above). An editor will never say no to work they haven’t read. And that means they’ll also never say yes.
Then there’s the whole fear that “I’m wasting my time.” The little games that come preinstalled on computers? Watching Match Game reruns? That’s time wasting. Every scene, every chapter, every book we write is an important lesson. Maybe it’s a lesson in how not to write. But the act of writing accomplishes more than reading all the craft books on your shelf. The second novel I completed (still unsold for good reason) took me a year to finish. A multi-published author offered to read the whole thing and share her thoughts with me. At the time, I didn’t recognize that her gesture was a wonderful gift. She read all 267 pages of hard copy, and handed it back to me with plenty of ink added. Said the beginning was pretty rough, but the end, well, much better. She could see the progression in my writing over the course of the year.
Maybe you think you’re wasting your time. But the learning process happens when we’re laying down those phrases, sentences, scenes, and chapters. Call it on-the-job training.
And success? Who’d be afraid of that? Plenty of people. To write in obscurity makes us battle one kind of fear, but once the contracts come, another sort of pressure presents itself.
The productive writer may know all these things, but the productive writer responds like this:
They write anyway. Productive writers hit their knees, then rise up and write. Even if they’re afraid.
Labels: productive writers fear
posted by Lynette Sowell at 11:08 PM
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