8

Go to War Against Your Fears

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

– Paulo Coelho

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

When you aspired to become an artist, you imagined publishing work that gets better with age and your peers telling each other, “Now there’s talent!”

Instead, when you try to create, you feel paralysed.

You don’t know if your big idea will survive, and every moment you spend breathing life into it is a struggle.

What you eventually create takes longer than you planned, and it fills you with disappointment.

Here’s what happened to me:

When I started writing in public for the first time, I worried how people close to me would react.

What would my friends say if I mined our confidence for a story?

What would my mother think if I wrote about sex?

Will people think I’m odd if I describe how I get up at dawn to write and that I sometimes prefer being alone in a small room with a big idea to the company of others?

I felt like an imposter.

I thought, “Who are you to call yourself a writer? Get out of here before I call the police!”

My fears held me back from being honest on the blank page because I was worried about what other people would think.

These selfish fears held me back from my best mistakes, from unexpected opportunities and from becoming a better writer.

I should have written about the party where I drank too much and embarrassed myself, the time I got fired and what happened next.

I should have shown my warts because that’s the job. I should have known I was facing one of the common fears everyone with a big idea faces.

I’m Afraid of Starting

Starting is tough.

When I was in my early twenties, I told people I wanted to write a book. What I didn’t tell them about was my problem.

For years, I couldn’t start writing. I’d open up my word processor and then switch to my internet browser for research. I’d answer my email or see if there was something I wanted to buy on Amazon. Afterwards, I’d check my bank balance and feel depressed.

It went on like this until I disappeared down a rabbit hole of meaningless web searches and doing anything but my most important work.

I wasn’t writing anything. I believed I wasn’t ready to write, and I needed some anointed mentor to pull me aside and say, “Bryan, now is your time.”

Jealous of the success of others and sick of my lack of progress, I joined a fiction and nonfiction writing workshop in Dublin. On the second evening, the instructor said every student had to submit a short story.

I was afraid of starting, but I was even more afraid of being found out.

I hadn’t written a short story in years, but I didn’t want the class or the instructor to know.

A writer in a writing class who doesn’t write, is a fraud.

I went home, and I wrote. I wrote that night and the night after that. I wrote until I finished my first short story. It was terrible – the instructor told me this later – but that didn’t matter.

I had taken the first step towards facing my fear of starting.

How to Conquer This Fear

If you’re having trouble starting, remember: It’s your job to turn up and work on your big idea.

Be brutal with the activities filling your day. No, I’m not suggesting unemployment or divorce. Instead, eliminate the non-essential:

Protect your free time and concentrate on developing a habit of creating every day.

I learnt how to start by creating subtle mental triggers for writing. These include brewing coffee, setting a timer for how long I want to write and disconnecting from the internet.

My routine for becoming a writer involves doing this at the same time each evening or morning. It’s a ritual, and that means I don’t have to think about starting.

To the outsider, this routine looks dull, but it helps me write. Writing is more exciting than anything else I could do with my free time.

Once you’ve learned how to start, consider it a victory to work on your ideas for 10 minutes without getting distracted. The next day, aim for 15 minutes. The day after, work on your ideas for 20 minutes.

Let these small personal victories accumulate over time and you will conquer this fear. You’ll know you’re winning when it feels like your ideas are taking over your life. That’s a better problem–trust me.

I’m Afraid I’m Not Good Enough

Before writing this series, I published two books: A Handbook for the Productive Writer (now called The Savvy Writer’s Guide to Productivity) and a novella Poor Brother, Rich Brother.

I am nobody.

While writing the former, I was afraid others would ask, “What right do you have to explain how to be productive?”

I still think that.

I also knew I’d spent hours researching productivity methods and studying how artists work. I’d read dozens of books by authors explaining how they work, and I knew enough to organise my thoughts into a book.

Even though I am nobody, I gave myself permission to write a book because we’ve got to start somewhere.

Today, I’m afraid of hugely successful writers like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and J.K. Rowling. They can write or create far more substantial works per year than I ever could in a lifetime.

King, for example, writes at least one novel per year, and his books are hardly thin. Books like The Stand and The Shining are more than 500,000 words long, while J.K. Rowling has created an entire world that people have made films about and even created a theme park to bring her fictional world to life.

I wonder, why bother? Shouldn’t I just leave things in King’s and Rowling’s more than talented hands and stop wasting my time?

If you’re not a writer, perhaps your negative self-talk goes a little a like this:

Let’s fix that.

How to Conquer This Fear

I’d like to tell you negative self-talk disappears when you’re standing on the foundations of experience and success, but even creative masters doubt themselves. The Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) struggled with self-doubt throughout his entire life. His advice?

If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”

Become aware of your negative self-talk and listen to it. If your mind is a blue sky, negative self-talk is nothing more than black clouds that you can watch as they pass.

Accept negative self-talk for what it is – just talk. If this is a struggle, ask yourself:

Indulge for a few minutes in this self-reflection. Then, set this negative self-talk aside by journaling, meditating or exercising.

Then you should be ready to sit down and do your work. Give yourself permission to create. When it feels difficult or overwhelming, remind yourself every artist must start somewhere and now is your time.

To imagine you are a creative poet, writer or musician is to become that person. So, push forward one word, one idea or one beat at a time.

You’re almost there.

I’m Afraid They’ll Judge Me

“What will my mother say when she finds out I’m writing about sex?”

“What will my friends think when they catch me describing the world and its ugly imperfections?”

“What will my wife/husband do when they see themselves in my work?”

I don’t like writing pieces like this. They’re hard work, and they’re more personal than a guide or a review. I almost deleted this chapter several times.

What’s to enjoy about revealing a job didn’t work out, I was lazy, and my work failed?

What must you think of me?

New artists find it difficult to separate their personal lives from their work, and they often regard criticism of their work as a reflection on their character.

Fiction writers, for example, often face a disconcerting moment when they reread a piece and find parts of their personal life scattered on the page.

I’ll never forget the first time my wife read a short story I’d submitted into a competition. She asked if she was the woman in the story. I didn’t admit it then, but she was right.

How to Conquer This Fear

The judgement of your peers and sometimes of people you trust is an essential part of the creative process if you want to overcome your weaknesses.

American film director Andrew Stanton (b. 1965) – he of WALL–E and Finding Nemo – tells his team at Pixar studios to “fail early and fail fast.”

Stanton and his team rely on critical feedback to adjust problems in their work head-on and to avoid costly mistakes in their films down the road. He says,

You wouldn’t say to somebody who is first learning to play the guitar, ‘You better think really hard about where you put your fingers in the guitar neck before you strum, because you only get to strum once and that’s it. And if you get that wrong, we’re going to move on.”

Having your work judged is never easy, but the more you reveal your work to the world, the better you’ll get at separating yourself from it.

Then when someone in the know criticises your work, know that it’s about your work and not about a personal failing of yours.

I’m Afraid of Finishing

When I was in my mid-twenties, I spent years struggling to finish anything. I wrote dozens of short stories and abandoned them. I thought of articles I wanted to write for newspapers; I researched them and then I never finished them.

There wasn’t any one moment when I learnt how to complete my work and become a writer. Instead, I got a job as a journalist writing for a newspaper. There, I had to finish my articles by a deadline because if I didn’t my editor would have fired me.

I know this because he called me into his office after I missed a deadline and told me so.

Finishing is harder than starting for another reason too.

Many artists say they feel a certain sense of emptiness when their book, painting, album or big idea is finished. You live with something for hours, days, months or even years, fantasise about the moment it’s over and then when that time comes, you feel bereft.

How to Conquer This Fear:

I stopped polishing my articles until they were perfect and I finished them.

On more than one occasion, my editor sent the pieces back to me, saying I’d left out an important paragraph or my introduction needed reworking. Other times, the sub-editors of the paper revised my articles entirely.

Having my work being taken apart felt brutal, but at least I was getting paid to write, and I learnt more from finishing my articles than from endlessly reworking them.

If the finish line feels far away, break your work down into smaller pieces that you can finish one by one. Instead of finishing an album, finish one song. Instead of writing a screenplay, write a scene. Repeat until you finish.

Know that you must break away from your creative project in the end and release it into the world. Then, erect a boundary between who you are as a person and the big idea you’ve finished.

Actor Johnny Depp (b. 1963) is just one of the many successful actors and actresses who erect such barriers.

I would rather stay as ignorant as possible about the result of anything because once you’re done playing that character, it’s really not your business anymore.”

Depp, like many writers and musicians who dislike listening to their old works or rereading their novels, doesn’t watch himself in past films. Depp like many creative masters stands apart from his big ideas and because of this, he is free to grow in different directions.

I’m Afraid of Failure and Rejection

Most artists have stacks of unpublished essays, articles and stories in their drawer, notebook or on their computer.

Your personal slush pile could be a stack of paintings, recordings or something else entirely. Know that it’s all part of the creative process.

Every creative work isn’t meant to succeed. Not everything Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote was a hit. His plays Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens, which he wrote at the height of his creative powers, are far less popular and acclaimed than Hamlet and King Lear.

Some pieces serve as markers for your journey towards becoming a better artist or as evidence that you’re doing the work.

How to Conquer This Fear:

I was rejected more times than I care to admit over the past week. I contacted five authors I admire with interview requests. Four of them said no.

I asked several podcasting experts for their advice for a guest blog post I’m writing. Half of them didn’t reply.

I pitched guest posts at three big blogs, two of which said no.

People are going to reject your ideas, and that’s OK. Rejection waits for you at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of your big ideas. It goes where you go. Everybody who succeeds gets rejected.

By turning up and creating, you cut through your fear of rejection. Even if some people reject your work, others will embrace it. The next editor or patron you pitch might accept your ideas. You could win the next contest. Your next interview request might be granted.

To become an artist, you must create today. You must create now. You create like your life depends on it.

Because it does.

I’m Afraid of Success

When the World Chess Championship began in 1990, Garry Kasparov (b. 1953) was a success. His opponent at the championship was Kasparov’s long-time rival Anatoly Karpov, and the odds were in Kasparov’s favour.

The two chess players competed in 24 games over three months, with 12 taking place in New York and 12 in Lyon, France.

Although Kasparov began the competition strongly, he began to commit mistakes. He lost the seventh game and, at the close of the first half of the tournament, the men were tied.

After losing a big game, Kasparov looked fragile and afraid. He was in real danger of losing his world title.

The New York Times reported, “Mr Kasparov had lost confidence and grown nervous in New York.”

Instead of quitting, Kasparov turned to a secret mental strategy for conquering his fear. When he sat down at the board for a decisive match in France, Kasparov puffed up his chest, adopted a fiercely aggressive playing style. He acted as if he were confidence itself.

Chess player Josh Waitzkin wrote:

Everyone in the chess world was afraid of Garry and he fed on that reality. If Garry bristled at the chessboard, opponents would wither. So if Garry was feeling bad, but puffed up his chest, made aggressive moves, and appeared to be the manifestation of Confidence itself, then opponents would become unsettled. Step by step, Garry would feed off his own chess moves, off the created position, and off his opponent’s building fear, until soon enough the confidence would become real and Garry would be in flow. He was not being artificial. Garry was triggering his zone by playing Kasparov chess.”

Through acting like a champion, Kasparov subsequently won the sixteenth, eighteenth and twentieth games and retained his title as World Chess Champion.

How to Conquer This Fear

To overcome your fear of success, adopt the Kasparov mind-set. Force yourself to behave like you’re full of great ideas; you know what you’re doing, and you’ve already won.

If you’re working on a novel and you’re afraid of what will happen when you achieve a breakthrough, ask yourself, “How would a great novelist and storyteller write this?”

If you’re composing a track for an album and the hook scares you, ask yourself, “How would a world-class musician play this?”

Be bold with your answers. Push past that place of discomfort and fear until you reach a place where your success is inevitable.

Offer no quarter for self-doubt. When you enter into the mental zone that belongs to the victorious, you won’t fear success; you’ll relish it.

Seizing Victory

Each morning when I sit down in front of the blank page, I feel the heavy paws of fear on my shoulders pressing me down, his cold breath in my ear, his raspy voice telling me, “You’re not good enough.”

I step forward one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one idea at a time. I force myself to press “Publish” because this is a war I must win. Then, I reach out to others and show them what I’ve done.

When they don’t believe me, I show them my wounds.

Do you know what happened when I did this for the first time?

Nothing.

Our would-be audience is more concerned with the problems in their lives than anything you and I are too afraid to say or to finish.

The problem isn’t what people will think of our work or that we’re damaged or too ambitious. It’s convincing our would-be audience that our big ideas are worth their time.

Go to war against your fears.

If victory were easy, the conquest wouldn’t be worth it, but your struggle and frustrations are simply opportunities in disguise. You will unmask them for what they are during your bold march forward.

What you must never do is retreat because filling a blank page or a virgin canvas is too much work.

What you must never do is to let difficult moments overwhelm you and prevent you from seeking out new ways to improve your craft.

What you must never do is quit on a big idea because it’s more elusive than you thought.

So create, damn it.

Don’t hold back.

And put your ideas out there.

Because each idea you fire is an arrow into the belly of the beast.

Creative Takeaways