Fear
(This was the tangent of the other day. I just now finished it.)
I belong to a bunch of mailing lists. You might or might not know this. I think at last count, I belonged to almost 100 different ones, but I do read 86 of them on the web most of the time, so it's not like I have three million email messages a day to wade through.
One of those mailing lists is the DelRey list, which is a nice bunch of people most of the time. Every list has its spats occasionally, and this one is no exception. But...
This post isn't really about spats. This post is about fear.
There's quite a mixture of writers on the list. Most of them, I think, are dedicated. Some are published in pro markets. Some in semi-pro. Some in non-paying ezines, some by F&SF. But this post isn't about them either.
A couple of days ago, a comment was made about comparing publishing to baseball, and if a batter was batting extraordinarily well in the minor leagues, then wouldn't it make sense to take the next step up and try the majors?
Would you be happy if you knew you had a good chance to realize your dreams, but didn't have the courage to proceed? Holly has written a great article about this as well, btw. I do recommend that you read it if you haven't already. I know authors who write comfortable things continuously, and never expand, never try something different.
These authors are in ruts. They are in comfortable places, never quite satisfied with what they have, but never quite admitting that the minors just isn't enough. I will be the first to admit that the minor leagues might be perfectly fine for some people. That's your perogative. I'm not going to try to argue you away from it.
Now, bear with me here. I do have a point somewhere in this mess.
BNA get in ruts too. I can probably fill up both hands and a foot counting the BNA (Big Name Authors) who haven't stretched their wings for years and years and years. They write what is comfortable and familiar to them. They don't try new things. They forget what made their work so great to begin with. They don't write for themselves any longer, they write for pop culture.
I think this is one of the reasons why I forced myself not to write any sequels this year. I didn't want to get in a rut, and I succeeded.
But when you get in a rut (and believe me, I've been in them before), you write what is easy and simple and comfortable. It's like slipping on an old pair of sneakers after you get home from work. Sometimes, the sneakers are so old and worn that you can see your toes through the tops, but they're still your old and worn sneakers. Something familiar you can fall back on. Somewhere familiar where you already know the world, the people, the stories, and nothing can surprise you anymore. A lot of authors who have been published by epublishers or self-published their books have given up on New York. I'm not sure I believe in that way of thinking, myself.
But this post isn't about epublishers, or publishing alternatives. This post is supposed to be about fear. So let's talk about fear. Fear of trying something new, fear of being rejected, fear of succeeding... I've had all of these fears in my heart at one time or another. I was deathly afraid when I sent my first novel this year to an epublisher. I thought, "What if I get rejected? What if an epublisher rejects my book? If an epublisher rejects my book, where will I go from there?"
I was all set to crash and burn from the beginning. I cried when I attached Second Coming to the email and sent it away. I had my heart in my throat for three weeks, had the cable shut off for four days, and when it came back on, had an acceptance letter in my inbox.
Fear, to me, is what I felt when I clicked on that message to open it. Fear was also being afraid of the next step--where did I go from here? Fear was also how other writers would treat me, now that I had taken the plunge even though it was epublishing and not 'real' publishing, according to them. (I learned how they felt really fast.) Fear was signing the first contract, and poring over each and every nuance to make sure I knew what I was signing.
Fear was sending out the second book, just to prove to myself that the first wasn't a fluke. Fear was getting that one accepted too, and then selling the print rights to someone else, and then selling another book.
Fear was when the first publisher for The Tenth Ghost went belly-up and I had to send it to someone else. Oddly enough, after I sent it the second time, I wasn't afraid anymore.
Fear will be crafting a query, synopsis, and putting it all in a package to select agents on my list. After writing five books so far this year, four have been accepted and one's still outstanding. Once I finish the sequel to the fourth, I might end up with five novel sales this year.
And I'm afraid to take that step towards realizing my dream. I'm afraid, still, that what I write will not be good enough for any professional agent or publisher. That I'll be stuck in the minor leagues for the rest of my life, and I'll never get to write full-time. I'm afraid that I'll end up bitter, and crushed, and broken. I'm afraid that the people who told me I'd never make it as a writer were right, even though I've sold four books so far this year. There are other fears, too, combined in all of this. That something will happen and my publishers will drop my books. That I'll never get my own publishing company off the ground, or the zine I want to edit, or any of my other projects finished.
Those are my fears. Those fears are what I have to deal with every day in my quest for my dream. I haven't told many people about my fears, I try to keep them hidden, but the original email this post is about made me think that I could take some of the power away from my fears if I write them down and face them.
So, lately I've been thinking about New Year's Resolutions, and what, exactly, my fears are about the next year. This year, I did great on the New Year's Resolutions, but I can't resist making it a bit more difficult for myself next year and challenge some of my fears at the same time.
I can't let fear hold me back anymore. If I don't try, I'll never know. If I don't take that step forward, I will live the rest of my life not knowing if my dream could have succeeded. I might fail; heck, I could get in my car tomorrow and be run over by a train, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stay home in bed and pretend the world doesn't exist.
The only thing I can do to make sure I have a good chance of success is to write the best novel I can, the best synopsis and query letter I can, and hope for the best. Isn't that what we all have to do?
I'm working on those New Year's Resolutions right now. I'm making them more difficult; I'm raising the stakes.
When you start out at the bottom, there's really nowhere to go but up, you know?
Wish me luck.
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