Here’s the thing. I’m always afraid that I’m getting it wrong. That there are things I am just not capable of. Even when I’m feeling good about my current project, there’s a voice in my head telling me maybe I’m just deluding myself. How can I trust my happy feelings?

A lot of my writing life is about killing those fears.

I just cut about 15K from a 40K WIP, because after 2 weeks of waffling around trying not to admit it, I realized there were a few things that had gone off-track. Ignoring my fear just prolonged the problem. And it was such a relief to cut those chapters! It was scary, but it opened up new possibilities. I found the story again, and now it’s zooming along and I feel much, much better.

Yesterday I asked a question on Verla Kay’s Message Board for Children’s Writers and Illustrators aka the Blueboards (which is a fantastic resource if you are interested in writing/illustrating for kids/tweens/teens) about how other people feel they grow as writers.

There were a bunch of good answers, but one that rang very true to me was “push yourself to write outside your comfort zone”. In other words: don’t let your fears hold you back from trying something new.

I can see this in my own writing. I had always been leery of first-person before I started FORTUNE’S FOLLY, but it was experimenting with first person that really (I think) broke me out of a rut I had been in. THE MAGICAL MISADVENTURES OF PRUNELLA BOGTHISTLE taught me that sometimes you need to be unafraid to throw out huge amounts of work (in this case, an entire draft) to find the real story. CIRCUS GALACTICUS is probably the most outside my comfort zone I’ve gone, with a scifi setting and a character whose voice is significantly different than my own, and a broader cast of characters to juggle. And not only was it the most fun to write, but I honestly think it’s the best thing I’ve written so far. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have flaws, but I am so glad that I didn’t let fear win, that I took the plunge and wrote it.

So now I’m thinking of the other things that scare me. The new projects that I think maybe I’m not good enough for, that I might fail at. It’ll be a while yet before I’m ready to start something new, but when I do, I hope it’s something scary.

What about you all? How do you push yourselves outside your comfort zone, in writing, or in life?

On a related note, I found a lot of inspiration recently in this post by author Sara Zarr. My favorite paragraph:

Let’s face it—fear is easier than courage. Fear offers no resistance. It’s a black hole, a bottomless well, it’s always right there and handily accessible in never-ending supplies. You don’t even have to look for it—it throws itself at you, a needy, uninvited interloper. It’s loud and rude, while courage sits quietly and politely, waiting for you to call it forth. I’ve noticed this seems to be the case with all positive character traits; they’re quiet, they whisper, they wait. The negative ones are ready to party 24/7. I don’t know why this is but it is. For me, the only way to hear the good things is intentionally turn the lesser things down or off, and that takes some discipline. Asking myself: “Is this a thing I can change, or not change?” is a helpful place to start. If it’s the latter, I try to let it go. Sometimes I think the whole work of living is figuring out the difference between those things, and then acting accordingly.

And then there are things that just completely blow my mind and make me forget about fear, and remind me that the universe is awesome and amazing. Like this picture from the Astronomy Picture of the Day feed (credit to Bret Webster):

That’s an 8000 year old painting in a cave in Utah, under the Milky Way. Happy Friday!

Tags: writing