Two Ways to Fight #Writers Fear

Let’s be honest.

We writers have several fears about writing.

If we haven’t published anywhere, we fear to call ourselves a writer. Many times we fear judgment about what we write, so we stall, procrastinate and write on the surface. We fear we don’t have an MFA and don’t know enough about the writing craft.

When our short story, poem, or novel is finished, we fear to send out our work to a beta reader because we might hear something about our writing that we don’t want to hear.

One of the biggest fears? Our fear of rejection. We spend so much time perfecting a query and sending it to a lit agent only to never hear from them again, or we get a form rejection, which may be our 25th.

Fear stagnates. We stop flowing, we find ourselves trapped, or producing dull work.

Last week, I came across two helpful blog posts. (One I’d never read before). Both helped me reassess any fears I had about my writing. It is no mistake these posts found me.

The first comes from Krissy at Visionaire Kindness Words.

 

God grant me serenity, to believe,

without a doubt, I’m a writer.

Poet enough to hold this pen,

courage to write the things that secretly haunt me,

and wisdom to always edit

 

The second way to fight fear comes from Rebekah Radice, who I follow on Twitter.

 

F Face

             E Everything

A and

R Run

OR

Reframe that F.E.A.R

 Face It

         Explore It

      Accept It

               Rise Above It

 

The “It” in the above scenario is whatever the fear is:

Face your insecurities.

Explore the possibilities of writing with abandon.

Accept that fear will creep in on days when you’re too tired, hungry, angry or hurt. Acknowledge your feelings and later put pen to paper.

Rise above the particular circumstance you face and get back to your road in writing.

Help out a fellow writer: What are the ways you push past your fears of writing?