Write Fearlessly!

by Jim Denney A few years into my career as a fulltime freelance writer, I got a phone call from an editor. I had written several boo s for her in the past, and she li ed my wor . !Jim,! she said, !are you sitting down" I have a celebrity autobiography I want you to co#write, and you $ust won%t believe who you%ll be wor ing with.! &he said the name of a celebrity. &he clearly e'pected me to be thrilled. I had no idea who this person was. (evertheless, I managed to sound properly impressed. After all, it had been a long time since my last paychec , and I needed the $ob. As she e'plained the pro$ect to me, I felt a tingle of dread. I had never written a boo li e this before. I didn%t now if I could pull it off. )ut I had to pull it off. I had a family to feed and a mortgage to pay. I too the $ob. )y the time I flew out to meet with the celebrity, I new his story inside and out, and I was able to as hundreds of intelligent interview *uestions. +he guy was very impressed with my nowledge. ,e never suspected that, $ust a few wee s earlier, I had never heard of him. It was an en$oyable boo to write, and having that boo on my r-sum- helped me line up many more celebrity gigs. +he moral of the story. +a e ris s. Accept new challenges, even if you aren%t sure you can pull them off. &tep into the un nown and write fearlessly. /ou%ll be glad you did. As writers, we have many fears, insecurities, and self#doubts. )ut writers can%t afford to be ruled by fear. We have to be fearless. As Anne 0ice said, !If you%re writing, you need courage, you need faith in yourself that%s as strong as any talent you may possess.! First, we need to overcome self-doubt, the fear that we don%t really have what it ta es to be a writer. John 1ardner said, !(othing is harder for the developing writer than overcoming his an'iety that he is fooling himself.! &elf#doubt is a universal writer%s affliction. All great writers have doubted themselves. +hey became great by persistently continuing to write in spite of their doubts. John &teinbec battled intense self#doubt while writing The Grapes of Wrath. !2y many wea nesses are beginning to show their heads,! he wrote in his $ournal. !%I%m not a writer. I%ve been fooling myself.%! Despite &teinbec %s doubts, the novel he agoni3ed over went on to win the 4ulit3er 4ri3e and helped him secure the (obel 4ri3e for literature. &o focus on your dreams and goals, not your doubts. 5eep writing. &econd, we need to overcome the fear of exposing our souls to the world. Anne &e'ton won the 4ulit3er for her deeply personal poems about her struggles with relationships and depression. /et her fears nearly ept her from becoming a poet. As a student, she was so afraid of e'posing her poems to criticism that she couldn%t bring herself to register for a poetry wor shop taught by a renowned poet. &o she had a friend register for her. +he poet at the wor shop li ed her wor and opened doors for her in the publishing world. Within a few years, Anne &e'ton became one of the most honored poets in the world. )ut first she had to con*uer her fears.

J (ovelist 6rica Jong once admitted, !I went for years not finishing anything. )ecause, of course, when you finish something you can be $udged. . . . I was afraid to ta e ris s.! Don%t listen to your fears. +a e ris s. Write bravely. +hird, we need to overcome the fear of getting started. )efore 7olombian novelist 1abriel 1arc8a 29r*ue3 could sell :; million copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude and win the (obel 4ri3e for literature, he had to wor up the courage to write the first line. !All my life,! he said, !I%ve been frightened at the moment I sit down to write.! I once taught a writer%s wor shop and a young woman came to me afterward and said, !I $ust can%t get started. I now what I want to write about. )ut when I try to write the perfect opening line, nothing comes to me. Without a great first sentence, I can%t write the rest of the story.! <et me share with you the advice I gave her. I told her that her fear of starting came from unhealthy perfectionism. &ure, the first sentence is important=but it doesn%t have to be the first thing you write. Why not save your first sentence for last" Write the first draft all the way through=and by the time you%re done, a brilliant opening line may occur to you. Just get the words down any way you can. As (ora 0oberts has said, !I can fi' a bad page. I can>t fi' a blan page.! If you are a perfectionist, it%s time to give yourself permission to write badly. <oosen up! Don%t put so much pressure on yourself to get it perfect. ,ave fun with your writing. 4lay with words. Write *uic ly=a fast, messy, $oyful, e'uberant first draft. &ure, it will be filled with typos and some bad sentences=but it will also have energy and compelling honesty. ?For more information on how to write brilliantly by writing faster, see my new eboo Writing in @verdrive.A 1ive yourself permission to write badly, and soon you%ll be writing *uic ly and brilliantly. Fourth, we need to overcome the fear of rejection and failure. We fear putting our wor in front of editors and readers. We are terrified that they will condemn our wor = and us with it. In BCD:, 2argaret Atwood rented a fisherman%s cottage on the 6nglish seacoast. &he went there to write her si'th novel, a comple' dystopian tale. &he soon discovered that the sheer scope of the pro$ect intimidated her. &he spent the first si' months at that seaside cottage bird#watching, reading bad novels, and suffering from the cold damp weather. +hroughout that time, she didn%t write a single sentence. Finally, frustrated with herself for procrastinating so long, she too action. &he began to write. &he started by writing fragments of the story. &he s etched in characters, wrote a few patches of dialogue. At first, nothing hung together=but at least she was doing something. After a few more months, she finally achieved her goal. &he had written the first draft of what would eventually be her most acclaimed and successful novel, The Handmaid s Tale. +he only way to beat the fear of re$ection and failure is to bulldo3e your way through it by sheer force of will. /ou must write. And what do you do when you receive a re$ection slip" /ou write some more! !It does help,! (eil 1aiman observed, !to have the sort of cra3ed ego that doesn%t allow for failure. +he best reaction to a re$ection slip is a sort of wild#eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the eyboard muttering %@ ay, you EFGHIs. +ry re$ecting this!% and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other

: writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there%s nothing left to write.! We writers must learn to face our fears and embrace our fears. We must dare to do the thing we fear. We must ac nowledge the fear=but ta e ris s anyway. 6very time you do something challenging and scary, and you succeed, you ratchet your confidence up another notch. !Do the thing you fear,! said 0alph Waldo 6merson, !and the death of fear is certain.! &o ignore your self#doubt. Discard your perfectionism. Write brilliantly, submit your wor , and dare any editor to re$ect it. <ive courageously, and write fearlessly. KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK Jim Denney is a writer with more than B;; published boo s to his credit, including the +imebenders science#fantasy series. ,e has $ust released an inspiring new 5indle eboo for writers, Writing in Overdrive! Write "aster# Write "reel$# Write %rilliantl$. ,e has written boo s with supermodel 5im Ale'is, Star Tre& actress 1race <ee Whitney, and two &uper )owl champions, *uarterbac )ob 1riese and !+he 2inister of Defense,! 0eggie White. ,e has co#written many boo s with 4at Williams ?co#founder of the @rlando 2agicA, including 'eadership (xcellence and The )ifference You *a&e. Jim is a member of &cience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Follow Jim on +witter at GWriterJimDenney, and follow his blog at http.LLunearthlyfiction.wordpress.comL.