I happened to find a rough draft of a blog topic from early 2013 that I never got around to posting. It was about fear. Fear that I would not be able to write the sequel to The Magician’s Doll. To read it now is a bit of an eye-opener. I figured it’s as good a time as any to finish the post and put it up. So, from 2013, here it is:
Fear – oh, it’s there all right.
It hit me recently. I have another novel to write after The Magician’s Doll, and I found that even though I have ideas for it in my head, I wasn’t sure how to make them fall onto the page. Sorting them out suddenly seemed like a task so impossible, I froze. And once I froze, it all hit the fan.
I am in HUGE trouble, I thought. I am going to fail! What the heck was I thinking, trying to write a story that was going to require even more story? I wanted to crawl under the covers and huddle in a tight ball.
Yes, fear will shut.you.down.
Fear stuck with me for days. At times I could push it away, but it stood by, waiting for the moment my guard was down to steal over me and remind me that I had nothing.
Darned fear.
I finally started writing my worries down. If I couldn’t write the story, might as well write something, even if it was a jumbled mass of pessimism, right?
One thought stuck out from all the clutter on the page: the story I wanted to tell was there. Maybe it wasn’t clear to me just yet, but it was there. And even though I was terrified, on some level I could feel it.
So the next morning, I let the mind wander.
And suddenly the beginning was clear. And I was excited with the idea. And other ideas started to flow…
Now I find myself in 2015, and the first draft is finished and moving through the process for publishing. It took a while, but who would have thought?
As it turns out, not me in 2013.
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt