Cutting fears down to size
Settle in for this one, friend
One strategy for getting through fear is to use specificity to make the fear as small as possible. Here’s a story to explain:
I used to hate flying. I did it anyway, but I was always a hot mess of anxiety for every take-off and landing and air pocket of turbulence in between. That’s not weird or special; plenty of folks hate to fly.
But, a martial arts teacher/mentor I had gave me a technique to work through it, and it became a super important life-skill right away. She did this by first reflecting to me how big a place I was giving this fear in my mind and then by having me make a list, with great specificity, of the specific things I didn’t like/feared about flying.
Almost right away, “flying freaks me out; I hate it” turned into “people go Hunger Games at the gate and that pisses me off,” and “I don’t have personal space on the plane,” and “I have no control over my fate or safety,” and those things are way, way more specific and manageable things.
Not only did breaking it down give my brain a chance to think of reasonable strategies to address each of those things (“Hang back and board last!” or “Take an early flight that isn’t packed!” or “Request an aisle because I’m tall!” or “Read about safety measures I do have control over on a plane!”) but it also turned one giant monster into smaller, somewhat more manageable monsters.
Which is all a long story simply to say: plenty of talented people are stuck in a loop of fear and never write anything. And that entirely sucks for them and for those of us who never get to read their work. If breaking down the fear around writing and publishing into bite-sized pieces is helpful and gets you un-stuck, then I encourage you to steal the hell out of this strategy and make it yours. Don’t leave yourself stranded at the intersection of “I’m scared to send my manuscript out” and “everyone’s going to laugh at this”... but, instead, break it down into the smaller, more accurate things and see what that opens up for you and what strategies you can apply from there.
So, today, make a list of things that are stopping you. Then, start breaking those items down and see what happens. Once you’ve had an ah-ha moment, write about that.