On Creative Courage, Letter Three

Or a Correspondence on Fear, Well-Being, and Creativity

This is part 3 in a 6-part correspondence series between writer Henriette Lazaridis and me, Meta Wagner. Henriette is writing three letters at The Entropy Hotel and I’m writing three here at Page Fright, and we’ll cross-post them.

Links will be added as the letters get published: letter 1, letter 2, letter 3, letter 4, letter 5, and letter 6.

Dear Henriette,

Let’s keep this correspondence about fear and courage going!

In this letter and your response, we’re going to take on the intriguing question you raised when we decided to write these letters:

Are there useful fears for a writer?

In pondering this question, I started thinking about my underlying attitude towards fear. In a phrase: I’m against it!

I realize, of course, that fear serves an evolutionary, protective purpose, but in the modern world, so many of us feel fearful and experience a fight-or-flight response to things that don’t pose an actual danger.

I went through a terrible, prolonged phase of frequent panic attacks in my twenties when I lived in New York. Elevators, subway stations, wide streets—you name it—they all induced extreme phobic reactions in me. (This was in the early ‘80s, when there were also actual dangers lurking around many street corners.) I was fearful much of the time and ashamed of my “weakness.” Thankfully, I made it through to the other side (with some lingering phobias).

Fear was my nemesis and freedom from fear my greatest ally. To a degree, I still view life through this prism.

Perhaps it’s not surprising then that I started a newsletter for writers around the topic of fear. Page Fright’s slogan is “freeing writers, one fear at a time.” It’s a worthy mission, I believe, because I’ve witnessed in myself and others how fear can paralyze writers. And when I think of all the unwritten or unpublished novels or memoirs or essays, etc., it’s pretty heartbreaking.

The emphasis in my newsletter is on identifying and managing fears. But, it’s worth considering whether certain fears might actually be beneficial to a writer—might motivate rather than discourage them, spur them on rather than hold them back.

Which writer fears, when turned on their head, can be transformed into creative courage?

The fear that immediately occurs to me is one of the biggies: FEAR OF FAILURE.

It’s a rare writer, or creative person in any field (or, really, any human) who doesn’t suffer at least occasionally from the fear of failure. After all, the possibility of failure lurks in every corner of a writing life, given all the many forms so-called failure assumes: not completing work, not submitting it, submitting it and having it rejected, etc., etc. Any one of these brings up a sense of shame—the feeling that we’re not good enough—and shame sure runs deep.

I could say (and I believe) we need to redefine “success” and “failure,” and of course that’s true. For instance, I think a lot of writers still believe that self-publishing a book is a sign of “failure” because it’s “less than” having a book published by an established publishing house. This way of thinking doesn’t allow for the possibility that success could mean writing a book, putting it out into the world, deeply affecting readers, and perhaps achieving a lifelong goal.

In this scenario, a book that might have so much going for it but is not bought by a publisher—perhaps due in large part to the capriciousness of a changing publishing industry—just sits there on a writer’s laptop, going nowhere, uplifting or entertaining no one. All because of how the writer defines failure and success. Clearly, reframing failure might be necessary.

But what if you’re a writer who can’t or doesn’t want to adjust your notions of failure and success? Success, according to traditional measurements, is incredibly important to you. And these measurements include strong sales, positive reviews, your book being optioned by a filmmaker, etc.—in other words, all those markers that will impress others, especially those who doubted you. It might be that writing teacher who told you you’d never make it as a writer or a parent who scoffed at your dreams or an editor who rejected the article you obsessed over. If you’re driven by the desire to succeed and to prove yourself to others, it’s no wonder the threat of failure looms large.

Maybe, just maybe, you could use this fear in service of your writing. No less a literary light than George Orwell did! In his essay, “Why I Write,” Orwell calls one of a writer’s key motives “sheer egoism” and defines it in part as the desire “to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood. He continued, “It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one.” (He had me at “humbug”—a word that’s severely underused!) I’ve been highly influenced by Orwell’s view of creativity, and I love how he admitted outright that proving something to someone who doubted you or made you feel small or like you’re destined for failure is a worthy motive for writing.

If your desire to write is mixed with the need to prove yourself to others (or yourself) and avoid being a failure in their (or your) eyes, it means you’ve identified a fear that could work for you as a writer. It may not sound positive, like “making the world a better place” or “doing what I love for a living.” (And it might indicate a wound that needs healing for you to feel at peace within yourself and in relationships.) But, whenever a writer can flip a fear around and turn it from a liability into an asset, that is a cause for celebration.

Yours truly,

Meta

Readers, if you’re beset at times by a fear of failure, how do you handle it? Please share your experience and insights in the comments, below. Thank you!