Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Writing Fears

In honor of Stacey Kade’s Sharks and Boys contest, I decided to talk a little bit about fear.

I think I’ve expressed (many times) that I have this fear of aliens.  I actually watched this episode of Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files in which this couple had a video of a small little alien looking into their bedroom.  So, since I couldn’t get the little alien out of my head, I was up one night giving my daughter a middle of the night bottle and I kept staring at her open doorway, watching the shadow of the rocking chair move across from me and kept thinking that a little alien man was going to walk by her door.  Eventually I stopped looking at the door and just focused on looking at my daughter instead.

Okay, yes, my fear is crazy (especially since I write about aliens and have this weird fascination with them), but it started to make me think of the fear that we all have as writers and just as human beings in general.

How many of you get freaked out when you press the send button on a query?  What’s really the worst that could happen?  A rejection?  Somehow we still have this ultimate fear that by sending off that query something really bad is going to happen and we build up this irrational fear in our heads.  Like me with the little alien man.  What’s the worst that could happen?  There actually is an alien walking around my house?  Well good, then I could use him for research, or if he’s really that small I could just bop him on the head with my daughter’s puppy lamp and try to sell his body on Ebay for diaper money.  (Kidding…sort of).

Yeah…this is kind of a short post.  I had more to write, but I just can’t think of it right now and really should go back to work.

What do you fear with writing?  Is it un rational?  Do you really think the little alien man was faked on the show?

5 comments:

  1. My biggest fear is that I'm really a secret hack and my writing is terrible and oh god what am I doing everyone will hate it. I know, consciously, that I'm not a bad writer. I mean, I got a writing honor last year. Surely that means someone ELSE thinks I'm not a bad writer.

    But the fear's still always there.

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  2. Fear is a horrible thing. Not sure if they faked the little alien peering in the window, but I like to think they are real so I can pretend we don't have a lot of nut jobs living amongst us. Lol

    I fear my writing is not up to par, but I think many of us have that same fear. At least I'm willing to face it head on. So, if that little alien shows up at your place, invite him in for tea.

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  3. I have a lot of fears about writing, too many to go into here LOL. But I've found the best way to overcome them, in fact fear of any kind, is to just jump in and take the plunge.

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  4. Steph- I feel the same way with writing and then I think I'm a bad writer and everyone will hate me. But of course we all have to TRY to remove that doubt.

    Miranda- I will not invite that alien in for tea! I will bop him on the head with my lamp and squeal like a girl.

    Karen- I guess it's time that we all just clothes our eyes and take the big leap?

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  5. I too have several un rational fears about my writing as well. But, I always try to remember Beatrix Potter's words from Miss Potter: "There's something delicious about writing those first few words of a story. You can never quite tell where they will take you. Mine took me here, where I belong."

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