Fear can be writers biggest obstacle

I will visit Laker High School creative writing students this week. Their teacher invited me to speak with them because they are curious about the whole writing process and wanted to talk with an author.

I’m happy to meet with them. I’ve been working with young writers through most of my career as a newspaper reporter and editor. When I was running the newsroom of a respected daily newspaper, I often visited high schools and colleges.

First off, it was fun. Nothing like being challenged by young people about what you do and how you do it. But it also gave me a chance to meet young writers, and recruit them as potential future employees. Plus, it was just good community relations for our newspaper.

We hired lots of young people as part-timers, editorial clerks, free-lance writers and reporting interns. A few actually became journalists. Some caught fire in the business and went on to big-time careers as reporters and writers for national audiences. I think all of them enjoyed the experience of working in a professional newsroom.

In advance of my visit this week, the creative writing teacher asked her students to put together a list of questions for me to answer and discuss during our visit. I reviewed them this afternoon.

One word describes the questions. Terrific.

Very interesting. I can tell that they are giving the writing process a lot of thoughtful consideration. The questions range from: “What are the preparations you go through before sitting down to write a novel?” to “How do you deal with distractions when trying to write in an active area” or a household in chaos?

Alexis wants to know how I continue to find inspiration to write. Larissa is eager to find out what my biggest pet peeve was when I was an editor. Anthony says he would like to see if he could get his novel published and what is the best way to do that.

One question that came up repeatedly, in different variations, has to do with the obstacles to writing.
How do you get past writer’s block? What do you do when you hit a wall and simply do not know what to write next? What is the one thing that most young writers struggle with, and how should they work through that?

See what I mean? Great questions.

So, what do I think is the biggest obstacle to writing, and how do I get past it?

The answer is this: Fear.

Fear of failure. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of rejection. Fear of humiliation.

I once worked with a respected editor and writer who said he lived ever single day of his life in fear that he would be exposed as a fraud who had no idea what he was doing. “I start every day thinking that today would be the day that I will be discovered, and uncovered as a boob and an idiot. Once I accepted it and got past that idea, then I could carry on and aggressively attack the day ahead.”

The trick, in my mind, is to turn fear around to work in your favor. Instead of allowing it to block or cripple your efforts to write, use it as motivation to turn that writing into the absolute best piece of work possible. Make fear motivate you to excellence, don’t let it throw you off track.

Fear, and conquering it, will be one of the things we talk about at Laker High School this week.

I’m really looking forward to it.
A Grand Murder