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08
“Do the thing you fear, and
the death of fear is certain.”
1
The biggest mental obstacle—in writing, in war, in life
itself—is fear.
Fear paralyzes. It shrinks the mental faculties. It
keeps us from action, in this case, writing words in order
to get them published.
And while fear is a fact of existence, it need not lead
to defeat.
Consider a certain amount of fear to be a built-in
mechanism to keep us alert. That’s really what it is. It
shows you are engaged and awake and not a lawn chair.
Now, the writing life is full of fears. Fear of not be-
ing good enough; of not getting published; of getting
published and not selling; of getting published once and
never again; of getting stomped by critics (even those
within your own family). Fear that your mother will be
disappointed in what you’ve written, or your father will
think you’re just wasting your life.
Dwell too much on these fears and you can become
catatonic. I know of one writer who had an initial success
and never wrote another thing for publication, so afraid
1 Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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was he that he would be ripped by the critics. I even know
another writer who is one of the most gifted stylists I’ve
ever run across, but who has never submitted anything
for publication for fear he’ll be rejected.
Yes, fear is real, but so is the answer.
Young Teddy Roosevelt found it. He was a frail, sick-
ly child, afraid of many things. So he stayed inside his
house a lot and read books, mainly adventure stories.
One day he was reading a novel by the English author
Frederick Marryat. In his autobiography, Roosevelt re-
cords what happened:
In this passage the captain of some small Brit-
ish man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to
acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at
the outset almost every man is frightened when he
goes into action, but that the course to follow is
for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he
can act just as if he was not frightened. After this
is kept up long enough it changes from pretense
to reality, and the man does in very fact become
fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness
when he does not feel it.
From that day on, TR determined to live his life just
that way, and did indeed become a man known for his
boldness and vigor.
As a writer, you can live the TR way:
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1. Determine that you will act as if you had no fear.
Act as if you are a successful writer. Don’t do
this with arrogance, but with determination.
2. Don’t wait for your feelings to change; turn fear
into energy for writing. When a wave of anxiety
hits you, channel it in your writing. If you can
go somewhere and write at that very moment, so
much the better. Even if it’s in a journal or on a
napkin. Write.
3. Set writing goals that challenge you. Then take
an immediate step toward that goal. (See “You
are a business, and your books are the product.”
on page 186.)
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