Face Your Fear And Fuel Your Writing Part 5: Navigating Hardships

Over the next ten weeks I'll be examining fear, mining from my own experience and from what I've witnessed in my peers. Hopefully this will hit some nerves (good nerves, though!) and help other writers navigate the waters of fear and find success.

#5 Don’t Make Things Harder Than They Need To Be

Here's the truth about fear. It makes things hard. And if you’re used to approaching your writing life from a place of fear, you’re likely to believe that being a writer is really hard. You may even dread sitting down to write. Over time your subconscious is going to wake up to the belief that: writing = bad. And then you won't find yourself carving out time to write anymore.

Fear gets us all knotted up in such a way that we have to work twice as hard at writing, publishing, promoting and presenting just to overcome our own resistance. Such an attitude lands you shoulder-to-boulder, on an eternal uphill climb. This gets tiring fast.

When you find yourself working at a pace that feels unreasonable or exhausting, take a step back to consider whether or not fear is at play. Being driven to accomplish and succeed can be a very useful quality in the writing life. But your drive could also be the fear of failure in disguise.

Sometimes, just being still is all our writing lives need from us. I've even heard it said that the subconscious continues to work when we're asleep. I can attest to this. While working on Children of the Falls, the first book in the series ended up becoming so long that I split it in half. Suddenly I found myself in need of another title, and I struggled for days to come up with one. Then one night I dreamed of giving book 2 the title of book 1, and I woke that morning with a whole new title for book 1 sitting on my tongue.

So, take a break. Take a nap. Give your brain some rest and then come back. More will happen creatively.

Now imagine a writing life that isn't so hard, that's made a little easier because the creative juices flow a little more freely. Fear doesn't have any time to take hold because you're having too much fun! I’ll bet you could work faster and more efficiently—and even get better results—without fear weighing you down.

The Rest of This Series

Part 1: Identify Fear
Part 2: Admit You're Afraid
Part 3: Shift Your Focus
Part 4: Overpowering Perfectionism
Part 5: Navigating Hardships
Part 6: Retrain Bad Habits
Part 7: Do What Scares You
Part 8: Hold Your Course
Part 9: Be Logical
Part 10: Fearing Fear