I need to start a new book.
I’m not afraid of this book. There’s a white board beside my desk with mind mapping and a rough outline of this book. It’s a shorter, mid-grade book, so it shouldn’t take as long. I even have a working title I am happy with.
So. Why haven’t I started?
Well, there’s other deadlines, see, and there’s the fact that my daughter is home with me in the limbo between camp and school, and there are emails to answer, and there is a fishtank to clean, and contractors are working on the house and the hammering is distracting… It sounds like procrastination. But then today, this morning, when I thought “I will start the damn book today,” I balked, almost on a subconscious level. There is no rational thought here. I’m balking on writing this new book. And then I realized, it’s still that fear, only now it’s in disguise.
Facing your fear is a worthy goal, but only when you know you’re afraid! I had no idea I was afraid! Why didn’t anyone tell me? This evil, hidden fear of who-knows-what (failure? not being able to write a good book? not being able to finish what I start? I have no idea…) has been keeping me from writing for a couple of weeks now, when my conscious mind was firm in the belief that I just had to finish up some projects and clean the house and then I was good to go for writing.
Idiot. Deal with the fear. It’s inconsequential. Time to get writing.
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5 Responses to A new kind of fear. The worst kind of fear.
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Thanks for this. I love it… Recently my fear took the disguise of reading, so I have been reading more than usual, so I am back to School rules, (isn’t that sad) no reading until word count is done.
Funny… I’ve been feeling this too… I didn’t know why, but I just couldn’t start a project…
How? How do you fight this untouchable thing? I’m over 40 now and stories keep popping back up, whispering their sweetness in my ear or slipping me a stray thought as I frantically try and keep sane at work. “Fear, fear is the mind killer.” I chant and wrestle with the stupid, seemingly unknowable thing called FEAR.
Oh, and I have tried just doing it. I get about 1-2k words into and SCREEEEECH. Oh look a brick wall, which must be fear in disguise I just know it.
*punches all* oweeee
What are you afraid of? What do you imagine when you look at the fear itself? As a lifelong neurotic, its helped me to take vague anxieties and identify what is behind them. If I can make myself do that, I often find that the components of the overwhelming fear and anxiety are each individually manageable in some way.
Thank you Mur for always telling it how it is. I see now that my fear of a boring ending was what stopped me, and then fooled me with “Just do more research,” or “Change this and it will be better, but you’ll have to start over.” I’m moving forward and ignoring the fear that not knowing my ending means it won’t come to me by the time I get there.