When Jon Snow tells his Uncle Benjen that he is planning to join the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones, Benjen tries to talk him out of it. “You don’t know what you’re asking, Jon,” he says before launching into a litany of the disadvantages of the Watch. Jon is having none of it: he joins the Watch anyway.
When Sookie Stackhouse tells her friends in Dead Until Dark that she is dating the vampire Bill Compton, they all try to talk her out of it. “Honey, couldn’t you just date a regular human fella?” her best friend Arlene asks. Sookie ignores them, of course, and the whole basis for the True Blood book and television series is born.
At the beginning of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance, Lewis is trying to convince his friends to go canoeing into the wilderness. Ed is interested, but Drew and Bobby pull back. “We don’t really know what we’re getting into,” Drew says. “The whole thing does seem kind of crazy,” says Bobby. And yet, they all go.
Benjen, Arlene, Bobby, and Drew all play the same role in their stories. They are threshold guardians—characters who represent the forces trying to hold the protagonist back when she or he is about to cross into a new stage of being.
Threshold guardians are found in literature of all types.
In fairy tales, they come in the form of an ogre blocking a bridge or a dragon protecting a cave. In war movies, they’re the lover who begs the hero not to go to war. In romantic comedies, they’re the best friend who tells the protagonist that the woman of his dreams is out of his league.
When adventure, change, and life are calling, threshold guardians say, Don’t go! Stay home! Stay the same!
Sign up to get my free weekly strategies for writers.
There are many resources out there on how to use threshold guardians in your fiction. You can find some of them here and here. But this post isn’t about that.
This is about threshold guardians in our own lives.
Because they are there, trying their best to keep us from moving forward, and the better we understand them, the more able we are to deal with them
Here are eight things you need to know about the threshold guardians that may be trying to hold you and your writing back.
1. Threshold guardians are so common in literature because they are so common in life.
All around us are people and forces determined to hold us back, keep us from growing, make sure we don’t fully blossom.
As a writer, you’ve probably come across quite a few of them—I know I have. The friend who asks why you would spend your evenings writing when “everyone knows” it’s impossible to get published. The family member who suggests you go into a more lucrative line of work. The relatives who roll their eyes when you say you’re a writer.
2. Threshold guardians are often well-meaning.
Uncle Benjen wants the best for Jon. Arlene is truly concerned about Sookie. Many of the threshold guardians in your life have your best interests at heart—they don’t want to see you get hurt. Of course, threshold guardians can be manipulative and mean-spirited. But often, they’re the people who care about us the most.
3. Threshold guardians can come from within.
Unfortunately, the trickiest threshold guardians aren’t other people. They’re ourselves. They’re the little voices inside that tell us to wait, to stop, not to take the next step:
Do I really want to start a novel that’s going to take years to write?
Why am I submitting to that fancy journal? They’ll never accept my work.
I shouldn’t bother finishing that story. It’s not very good.
Writing my memoir will be a waste of time. There’s no market for creative nonfiction.
Sound familiar? If you’re not getting it from other people, you are probably hearing it from yourself.
4. Threshold guardians most often appear when we are on the cusp of change.
They tend to crop up when we’re beginning or completing something—at thresholds. We’re just sitting down to write our novel. Finally read to submit it. Thinking of experimenting with a new genre. These are dangerous places—perfect times for threshold guardians to appear.
5. Threshold guardians need to be acknowledged.
Did you think I was going to say they should be immediately silenced? Or totally ignored? No. Silencing them doesn’t work.
The more you try to shut them up, the louder and more persistent they get. Instead, let them know you’ve heard them. Say to your friend, “I appreciate your concern. I know you don’t think I should do this. But I feel it’s right for me, and I’m not turning back.” Say the same thing to yourself, when your inner threshold guardian appears.
6. Threshold guardians are often right.
If you thought I was going to say they are all dishonest, confused, or overly cautious, this may come as a shock: Threshold guardians are often spot-on. Jon, Sookie, and Ed all discover this.
It’s true: That novel probably will take a very long time to write. The literary journal of your dreams might turn down your story. The publishing market really is tough. Those things aren’t lies. They’re the truth.
7. Threshold guardians serve an important purpose.
Threshold guardians prepare us. They teach us to be cautious when we need to be. When we launch a new endeavor, we shouldn’t jump in cluelessly. We should know what we’re getting into.
The writer who starts a novel thinking it will take a few months and immediately rocket her to stardom is almost certainly in for a rude awakening—and is likely to fall by the wayside when the going gets tough.
The one who knows she’s starting a long, hard project—and a longshot—is more likely to be prepared for the long haul of a writing career.
8. Regardless of what the guardian says, you need to cross that threshold. Jon, Sookie, and Ed all ignore their threshold guardians. They have to. On the other side of that threshold lies their adventure, their destiny, their story.
Yours is to write that memoir, pen that novel, create that poetry or short fiction. To be a writer.
That doesn’t mean following that path is going to be easy. It almost certainly won’t be. The threshold guardians—whether friends and family or the little voices in your own head—may be absolutely right when they tell you how hard it’s going to be.
Do it anyway. Join the Night’s Watch. Fall in love with the vampire of writing. Head into the wilderness.
Try this:
Identify the external and internal threshold guardians in your life. Make a list. Write it down.
Write down the specific messages they bear—the exact words they keep saying. Put them on the page, where they are visible and concrete.
Write a response. Make it clear, simple, straightforward, and definite.
Post it where you can see it. Reread it whenever your threshold guardians start whispering in your ear.
What did you come up with? What do your threshold guardians keep telling you? How do you deal with them?
Receive my weekly strategies for writers. They’re free! Sign up here:
[simple_contact_form]
Stoplight image © Litllady25 | Dreamstime Stock Photos
This post is excellent psychological counseling, and can spur anyone who’s stuck with getting started with a new adventure, whether traveling alone, starting a new business, going back to school, or writing – and more. Bravo, Jill!
Thanks, Karen. I’m really glad it resonated with you!
Thank you, Jill! One of my iternal guardian’s regularly ant at me that “I’m too old.” I tell her that internalizing society’s false belief and spouting it regularly feels as if I am driving with the parking brake on.
. I tell her that it may be true that I’m too old to create a great love as a 60 something woman but, I’d like to see for myself so why not hop into the passenge’s seat and take her hand off the parking brake.
And then I write on: through Huffpost and Huffpost.live. That is my final response: WRITE ON!!