Fear is a strong but
often necessary emotion. It can be both motivational and paralyzing.
Writers, especially beginners, often allow fear to prevent them either finishing
or publishing a piece of work. I have many social connections with writers on
the internet and I’ve noticed a tendency amongst some, often the most sensitive,
to find excuses not to finish a piece of work. They’re forever editing their
work as they go along. They fool themselves into the idea that they’re seeking
perfection. In reality, they’re putting off the moment when they have to admit
to themselves, and to the world, that this is as good as they can make it. No
piece of work is ever perfect, either in the eyes of the reader or, more
especially, in the opinion of the producer. Unless, of course, the writer
happens to be one of those individuals who is so convinced of his own ability
that he’s unable to see past his many faults. Paradoxically, it’s often those
with the most confidence in their own ability who produce the worst work.
We’re all fitted with our
own internal critic, the editor that sits on our shoulder and pinches us each
time we misspell, use an inappropriate word, produce an ugly sentence, dole out
a thoughtless cliché. The trick is to knock the editor off, send this
nit-picker to the back of the creative mind and make him wait there until he’s
required. If I allowed my internal editor free reign, I would never have
completed a single piece of work, let alone published anything or won
competition prizes.
I know the arguments
against relegating the editor to a back seat during creation. I’ve heard them
all. ‘I can’t ignore even a typo; it stops me moving forward.’ ‘I have to have
that first sentence perfect before I can move on to the next.’ ‘How can I say a
piece is moving forward when I know there are errors there to be corrected?’
And so it goes on. Let me be frank, brutal, even. If you’re unable to get past
these self-imposed barriers, you are in the wrong job. You are never going to
be a creator. You should be working as a copy editor, a proof-reader, a lumberjack,
jockey or any other occupation you care to name. But, honestly, if you can’t
allow for your own mistakes during a first draft, you’ll never complete one.
This isn’t a personal opinion but a logical conclusion. Think about it: NO
piece of written work will ever be considered perfect by every reader or
writer; ergo, whatever you do to make it perfect will make it imperfect for
someone else.
So, what can you do?
First of all, face that
fear and call it by the name it actually responds to. This isn’t a fear of
never getting it right, this is a fear of success, a fear that you may actually
produce something that a publisher will accept and place before that group of
people we all want to admire us; readers. It’s a fear that one, maybe more, of
those readers will spot something to make you feel foolish, inadequate, less
than perfect. That’s the real fear you’re facing.
But, hang on: the
publisher accepted it and put it out there for his readers. So he must think it
worthy of a showing. The reader who finds fault is only one of the tens of
thousands of people who’ve read and enjoyed the piece. It’s inevitable that one
in thousands will have the necessary jealousy, pedantry, personal loathing of a
particular sentence construction or any other individual trait you care to
mention, to pick a hole in your work. The courage of the artist comes from
facing that reality and deciding you don’t care about that one lunatic,
obsessive, nit-picking pedant, or envious swine. And, if you think of such
critics in those terms, it does make it easier to ignore them.
Having faced that possibility,
the next step is take action. This involves actually sitting down and
completing the first draft of a piece. But the only way you’ll be able to do
this is to accept that that first draft, which no one else will ever see, will
be full of errors. Think of it as the block of wood the sculptor uses to
fashion a beautiful statue. The first chisel cuts, which may even be crude
lopping with a chain saw, will not produce anything that even resembles the
finished article. But, unless that sculptor takes his axe, his knife, his
chisel or his chain saw to the block of wood, he’ll never have anything to show
beyond his own vision of the finished article. You’re no different. Writing, of
any sort, is a creative process. You begin with only three things: a blank
sheet/screen, a means of making marks on that surface, and an idea. Creating is
about having the courage to make those initial marks, knowing that some will be
errors, minor and major, but aiming for an end which will have some
approximation to the initial idea.
I know it’s hard. I know
from early personal experience. I know it seems almost impossible for some of
you. But the method that has the greatest potential to get your written work
completed to a standard where you may feel confident enough to allow someone
else to read it, is to write it first. Obvious. But I mean by this that you
write the entire idea, complete the story, the article, the feature, even the
novel, first. Then go back and allow that other half of your brain, the editor,
the pedant, the policeman, to pick holes in it. Consider this not an assault on
your genius but a practical help in forming the piece exactly as you envisaged
it. If you think this can’t be done, consider: I’m in the process of writing an
adult epic fantasy trilogy. The first two volumes are written and I’m editing
volume 2 before I start to write the final volume. (Yes, I could have
considered the entire trilogy as a single piece, but I see each book as a
stand-alone piece). My point in mentioning this is that each of the first 2 volumes
exceeds 220,000 words and each was written without ever going back, even a page,
before I came to the end of that book. Yes, it meant a huge amount of editing,
proof-reading, amendment and correction. But, and this is the point, I would
never have finished even the first chapter if I hadn’t just ploughed on with
the story.
So, face your fear, accept
it for what it is, and beat it. Otherwise, you’re condemned to remaining a wannabee,
a frustrated artist with nothing to show for your efforts and abilities. I urge
you to try this at least once. Choose a short piece to begin with. Write the
whole piece before you even look at what you’ve written. Leave it for a week,
or more if you can bear it; do something else. When you revisit it, you’ll find
all sorts of faults, but you’ll also be amazed at what you’ve written. That’s
the time to free your editor and let him polish the work, let him find and correct
the errors. You may end up with your own Venus de Milo or David. You might even
complete something more sublime. Who knows? The answer, my friend, is ‘no one,
until; you have the courage to try.’
I started by asking what
you fear most as a writer and, for the sake of fairness, I must admit my own
fear. I fear, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, that I’ll run out of
things to say. And how do I face that fear, how do I work against the likelihood?
Well, in my case it’s an easy fear to face and address: I take an interest in
as many things as I can. That way, I’m unlikely to dry up. As one of those
writers compelled to create, I’m lucky. Motivation is never a problem. Time and
energy are my most precious and most easily exhausted factors. But more of that
in a different post.
For now, I’ve confessed my
own fear and hopefully addressed one of those most common to writers. But what’s
your fear and how do you deal with it? You never know, by putting it out there
in public you may do two very useful things: you may help some other poor tortured
soul, and you may find a way of helping yourself get over what you most fear.
(In the spirit of
illustration, it took me almost exactly an hour to create this piece. And a
further quarter of an hour to edit and correct it. I know, because I keep a
time sheet of my activities in order to ensure I don’t waste that most precious
of assets: time.)
