Writing and Fear
“The question is not who influences you, but which people give you courage.” Hilary Mantel
Fear seems to paralyse creative work of all kinds. Unlike playfulness which is all about being loose and open and relaxed, fear closes us down, as we clench our muscles and become rigid and refuse to let anything in.
Different fears arise, at different times and for different people.
Perfectionism and fear
I first encountered the quotation from Randall Jarrell - "a novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it." - in a blog post by Neil Gaiman. I was struggling with one of the many rewrites of my first novel, and overwhelmed that there was just so much that needed fixing. How would I ever be able to make it perfect?
Once I realised I didn’t have to - that it could never be perfect - then I was able to relax and get on with finishing the novel, and gradually I started to become braver about sending it out into the world.
Instead of letting myself be paralysed by the fear of rejection - which hit every time I read agents’ websites, and their requirements - I simply decided it was their job to reject my work, not mine.
I even adapted the Jarrell quotation for my own purposes. A novel is always going to be a long piece of prose that has many things wrong with it.
That works for me, because many of my fears come from perfectionism. It’s not as if I risk assuming every word I write is just fine as it is, expecting the world to adapt to my typos and horrifically clumsy prose style.
(Except here, of course. Do let me know when I fuck up - not if! We all need editors.)
One of my favourite stories about creativity comes from the book Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an "A".
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.Bayles and Orland
There is something very convincing about the sheer physicality of the example, isn’t there? When I was fact checking the story, I read that the original was from a photography class, and that Bayles and Orland are actually photographers - but somehow by trying to broaden their references to include other arts, they stumbled on better story. Truer than the truth.
There’s a lesson in that for us too - keep on looking and there just might be a better story idea around the corner. The first and most obvious idea is not necessarily the best.
The lesson here then, is don’t be afraid to be rubbish. Just keep on writing without straining for perfection. The more you write, the better you will get at it.
I am reminded of the advice from Ray Bradbury I mentioned back in the Story Alchemy post. Write a short story every week for a year because it’s impossible to write 52 bad stories. Mind, that doesn’t mean the first one will be rubbish, any more than it means the last one of the year will be perfect.
It’s all about weight of pots. For us, it’s not simply about number of words, although that’s part of it. There’s a saying that we have to write and throw away a million words before we can hope to be any good at writing.
But it’s not just about words. It’s also about FINISHING things.
Without finishing a story, a novel - there is so much craft knowledge we are failing to acquire, from the structural basics of beginning, middle and end, to keeping the promise to the reader made at the beginning of the story that the ending will somehow be satisfying, a revelation - that we will not have wasted our time.
I don’t think this means that we have to go all out, like some of us do in NaNoWriMo every day, scribbling away, writing thousands of words a day.
Terry Pratchett, who was undoubtedly a very prolific writer, was known to write only 400 words a day. He just did it every day.
Then again, Terry is that rarity, the kind of author who likes writing, not having written, or Being a Writer, but the actual sitting there and making things up in front of a screen. At the time we met, he was still working as a press officer for the South Western Electricity Board. He wrote four hundred words a night, every night: it was the only way for him to keep a real job and still write books. One night, a year later, he finished a novel, with a hundred words still to go, so he put a piece of paper into his typewriter, and wrote a hundred words of the next novel.
What might we unconsciously reveal?
Another issue may be the fear of embarrassment. What if we reveal something about ourselves - perhaps that there are things we don’t know, or perhaps something even more personal and shameful.
On the not knowing front, there is a real difficulty. We must always do our research, of course (being careful not to accidentally disappear down a YouTube rabbit hole and become anti-vaxxers!). However, there are those things which are just too obvious that we don’t know our own ignorance.
Why yes, I am invoking Donald Rumsfeld. I often do…
A recent example which stood out for me was in a novel by an American writer. She had an English character receive a care package from home which included an Eccles Cake. She then proceeded to divide it into six slices to share with her colleagues. Most English people would know an Eccles Cake is an individual pastry - although they can be rich and stodgy enough that it may be difficult to eat a whole one! But they are not a cake.
On that front, thorough research, and asking knowledgeable friends for advice, should suffice, although mistakes may get through. I have consulted firefighters and scientists to help me with fictional murder methods, for instance.
More on this in a later post…
Sex
On the more embarrassing human front, for example, writing about sex, the best place to start is to “write like no one is reading.” In some ways this is where beginner writers have it easy. No one is reading.
I managed to write those scenes in my first novel by telling myself no one would ever read them. That worked really well until I reached the end and thought it was good enough to be worth sending into the world.
Then I had to start taking risks…
At first, the only person I was making blush was myself. The next victim was my husband, who is pretty laid back, and already knows what I’m like.
The next person I shared it with was a young friend who promised she was unshockable, but, it turned out, was too embarrassed to discuss it with me.
I had several professional editors read the manuscript, as I was so concerned about these scenes. They all survived, and the sex scenes were only ever mentioned obliquely. Even when I found an agent who had me do several rounds of edits, the sex scenes were the only ones which escaped the red pen.
By this point I started to find it funny. My sense of humour is often my best protection.
There is some counter-intuitive evidence from criminology research that there’s less crime in dark streets… After adjusting for other possible explanations, it turns out that burglars, too, are afraid of the dark.
Embarrassment works that way, as well - it’s just as bad for readers as writers. Think of it as a challenge!
Writing is about being vulnerable
There are, of course, things which we write about which are much deeper and where we are more vulnerable.
“If you’re going to write... you have to be willing to do the equivalent of walking down a street naked. You have to be able to show too much of yourself. You have to be just a little bit more honest than you’re comfortable with...”
Neil Gaimain
It is important that we write about these things. These sensitive places where we can be honest and true are what it’s all about - they are the source of our shared humanity. It’s often this rare openness and honesty that brings us comfort from our reading, when we find another person who feels the way we do. Or, when it’s a feeling which is new to us, it can be even more important - as a way we can learn empathy for other people, who are unlike us.
Stories are about one person saying to another. This is the way it feels for me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way for you?
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Fear Of Being Seen
I have come to believe ninety percent of art-making is about courage. The courage to listen to our instincts and the courage to trust them. The courage to believe in the value of ourselves and our work. The courage to devote countless hours (days, weeks, years) to something with an unpredictable outcome. The courage to risk rejection and critique and a bad review. The courage to resist the cardinal rule of capitalism: that money equates success.
Robin Marie MacArthur in The Courage to Write
Courage!
I am not saying there’s an easy way through this one. Far from it.
But it matters to us, this path that we have chosen. It’s such hard work that we wouldn’t be doing it, otherwise.
If we have been saved at times by reading, by finding a connection through fiction with someone just through words on a page or a screen…. if we want to let our real selves be found by others in our turn, then there is only one way to go.
We must find the courage to take that risk, be open and vulnerable and that way we can make some sense of the world, create something meaningful, and most of all, light up these sparks of connections with each other.
Ann
There must be writerly fears I have missed. Please do share!
Down the Rabbit Hole
This is a very good piece about the fear of being seen
I found the “weight of pots” quotation in this blog about Coding. I am always surprised by the similarities between writing and editing novels and programming and software design.
The Neil Gaiman quotation about honesty is from his Masterclass course. There’s also a useful section on dealing with writers’ block, too.
More here on dealing with fear of failing, from Gaiman’s Tumblr
Half my family are into archery. My daughter even shot for GB in Europe in her teens. My son, who (like me) takes the world very slowly and seriously, got target panic when he was around 12 and gave up. Target panic is very much a fear of doing it and getting it wrong. It tends to take one of two forms, letting fly wildly at the first glimpse of gold through the sight, or the perfectionism of focusing and holding so long that the arms tire and shake creeps in and they cannot let fly at all (my son's problem). Any time I'm fussing about writing my husband reminds me I have target panic and just to enjoy the writing. (How anyone can enjoy target archery is quite beyond me. Zzzzzzz.)