Face Your Fear And Fuel Your Writing Part 10: Fearing Fear

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.

#10 Set Yourself Free Of Fearing Fear

I recently made a trip to Nashville. It was utter misery. Not that Nashville itself was miserable, the city is actually quite a lot of fun—and the sweet tea? Oooh, the sweet tea!—but repeated car trouble had left me stranded with no idea of when I could drive back home. How long am I going to be stuck here? What about my job? How do I get back home? How much is this going to cost? Oy vey!

Oh, and then I got in an accident with the rental car that I had to use in the meantime, but that's another story.

After a nightmare of a weekend I called the mechanic on Monday to see how my car was doing, terrified that I would get more bad news. I got more bad news—I was going to be stuck in Nashville for another three days. Well, at least my insurance was covering most of the problem.

I hung up the phone and, to my surprise... I felt fine. The news I received wasn't great, but it could've been worse. At least I knew what was going to happen.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that fear isn’t the problem—fearing fear is where we run into trouble.

Remember those famous words from Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address: "Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

FDR was essentially telling the American people that their fear was making things worse.

When we are able to exit the crazy mental loop of fear we’ll be in a better place to see clearly, aspire meaningfully, and stop tripping over our own self-defeating feet.

Beating a fear of fear doesn't mean all of our lofty goals are realized and our dreams come true. It simply means that when we're no longer fretting over the unknown we have more room to breathe, experiment, and evolve as writers when we’re not squeezed into those small and invented stories that have been dictated to us by fear.

Your life and your writing are both precious resources. Don’t waste a drop of either. Take charge of fear by not letting it control you. When you can finally start to see around the obstacle of fear you have a chance to step into your greatest potential.

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