Fear and the Writing Life: How to Face the Challenge and Thrive

As I mentioned last week, I’m doing a bit of final polishing before I send my novel off to my agent. I’ve posted earlier about the difficulties writers face in the last stages of long projects—the feeling that you’ve been running a four-year-long marathon and barely have enough energy to cross the finish line—and the techniques I use to deal with them. Today, I’d like to say a few words about another issue that comes up when a major project draws to an end: Fear.Every writer who’s been around the block a few times knows the truth: It’s after you finish your work that the real hard part starts. The waiting. The potential for rejection. The undeniable fact that no matter how dazzingly brilliant, original, and compelling your work is, there’s a real possibility that it will not get published, or that it will get published and flop. This is not negativity: It’s reality.

You can’t do much about the facts here. What you can do something about is the way you react to them. There are exactly three ways of thinking about the challenges of building a writing career, and the one you pick will make all the difference between a joyful and vibrant writing life and one of tension and pain.

1. Denial. If you’re a new writer, it’s relatively easy to convince yourself that your novel is going to be the exception. You’re going to be the 1 in 10,000 authors whose book is an overnight literary sensation.

This feeling has its benefits. It gives you the impetus to get your work out. It makes you feel good. It gives you confidence and energy.

But it also has an enormous disadvantage: The crash can be devastating. Once you realize you’re not going to be that 1 in 10,000, you can end up depressed and disillusioned. I’ve known more than one writer who set out convinced of his or her own brilliant future and ended up merely quitting as soon as they got a taste of failure and disappointment.

The problem with denying the realities of the publishing game is that it doesn’t give you any lasting resources to weather the challenges of the writing life. Denial is a drug. It may be exhiliating for awhile, but the withdrawal is painful.

2. Anxiety. The second possible reaction to the challenges of publishing is to give into the fear. I actually don’t know many writers who haven’t gone this way at some point in their careers. Fretting, agonizing, sitting up late at night staring into the darkness—most of us have been there.

This one doesn’t have an upside. It is painful. It drains your energy. It stains the pleasures and joys of the writing life. And it does absolutely nothing to make you a better writer. Yet, quite a few of us are loathe to give it up.

A note to myself and all other writers: Worrying about whether your work will be published does not make it more likely that it will.

3. Acceptance. The only way to get through the challenges of the writing life without driving yourself and everyone around you crazy is to accept them.

Here are the facts: Getting published, getting readers to buy your books, making a name for yourself—these things are hard. Even worse, success is capricious. Terrible writers sometimes become rich and famous. Brilliant writers sometimes remain unpublished and ignored. You can do things to boost the possibility of success, but a lot of it is out of your hands.

This is the reality. You’re a writer. Get used to it. Now relax, be happy, and get to work.