Authors worry. A lot. About what they’re writing. About what they’re not writing. About what they’ve just written and whether or not it will sell. Will they ever sell? Will they ever write anything they think is good enough to even submit???
Sometimes the worry helps motivate us. Sometimes, it keeps us from moving forward. And sometimes, when it gets really bad, worry becomes the reason we say we have to quit this way of life. We just can’t take it anymore. Those are the times I hope you remember this: How much we worry about whether our dreams will come true, is directly proportional to how important those dreams are to us.
It’s the same for everyone, so I don’t want you to think that if you’re not a writer you should skip this post. We all dream of one day doing things we don’t really think we’ll be able to do. But there are a few of these grand schemes that stick with us, no matter how impossible they seem. So we take wild, youthful stabs at accomplishing the impossible goal from time to time, until we get discouraged enough to stop. Only to start up again, because we just can’t let the dream go.
These are the dreams I look at as “callings.” The things we’re driven to do in our lives, regardless of the obsticles and warnings and signs that tell us we’re nuts for trying to do them. Writing is very much like that for just about everyone who starts on the journey to publication. If you don’t stop and stay stopped–if you keep coming back to it, no matter the rejection or the failed attempts in your past–at some point you realize that you really can’t stop. Sharing your view of the world through words is something you do because you have to.
These are the dreams that your future could be made of. The future you’re being called to have if you can muster the determination and the drive and the perseverance to keep going despite the worry.Whatever your dream is, it most likely won’t be easy to accomplish (for writers, we have to learn craft and learn voice and learn the process of drafting and editing and revision and starting over, and over and over). But it’s not like you can stop, right? Which leads to the ultimate worry–am I just kidding myself here? Is this really something anyone else in their right mind would be trying to do?
My answer–of course it’s not what anyone else would do. This is your unreasonable, unattainable dream. It’s what’s calling you to keep going despite the odds. Which makes it your worry alone. What YOU have to conquer–not the rejections or the less than constructive feedback or the excruciatingly slow timeline or the
countless other people zooming past you to live the dream you can’t have yet. You’re the reason you quit. You’re the reason you succeed. It’s just that simple.
Worry is the battle within us to squelch our dreams before we get too attached to them. It’s a defense mechanism we use to protect ourselves from the big fall that might come. It shows you what would most fulfill you if you achieved it, and what would most devastate you if you didn’t. Unfortunately, giving in to worry (quitting) can therefore become what cuts you off from the success your life could become, if you only found a way to stick it out and keep fighting.
My advice: Keep worrying. Keep writing. Whatever the cost in sleepless nights and bitten back nails and tears, if it’s your dream and you really can’t stop, then you have to learn to roll with it. You have to learn now NOT to quit. You have to see the worry for what it is: a sign that you want this more than anything else and you’re willing to do whatever it takes to succeed.
Work hard and fight through the worry–fight despite or perhaps because of it–and you will one day reach your dream.
Use the worry to stall out your dream and hold you back–and you will one day look back at what you were meant to be and know that the only thing that truly stopped you, was you.
Tags: writing articles
Thank you for this post, Ana, and for all your help in writing my own post on fear of failure. Very inspiring. I may write more on this topic for my freelance blog.
Anna, this post really got to me. It brought tears to my eyes because I am in a position right now where I fit into the “Worrying I’m not a good writer so I’m at a standstill right now.” I’m a beginning writer. I always had the wish to be a writer but never had the courage to try until recently. Nothing is coming to me right now or if something does it just doesn’t fit at all. This standstill has me worrying so much that I start thinking maybe I’m not supposed to be a writer. That’s a horrible thought to me and it just keeps haunting me every day. I sit down and, NOTHING. Sorry to blab on and on. I wanted to thank you for this article, it really touched me. Thank you.