The writer’s life: What are you afraid of?
September 11th, 2012 by ScottThe single greatest inhibitor to creativity is fear. Do you recognize any of these ‘voices’:
* I am afraid of typing FADE IN.
* I am afraid I won’t be able to finish the script.
* I am afraid I don’t have enough talent.
* I am afraid the words won’t come.
* I am afraid my characters won’t feel real.
* I am afraid people won’t like my writing.
* I am afraid people won’t like my story.
* I am afraid I won’t get an agent.
* I am afraid I am wasting my time.
* I am afraid I don’t know enough about the craft.
* I am afraid people will laugh at me.
* I am afraid I won’t make any money writing.
* I am afraid I won’t succeed.
I’m not a psychologist, but I know enough about the writing process to understand that if you allow these and like-minded voices to dominate your thoughts, you will have a hard time hearing your creative voice.
So the question on the table is, How do deal with fear?
I don’t think there’s any right or wrong approach — a writer will do what they need to do to vanquish or, at least, manage their apprehensions.
Some times you may be able to ignore the voice, the doubts, the insecurities — a good way to do that is to dive so deeply into your story, you drown out your negative thoughts.
Other times, you can use fear as a motivator: If, for example, you set a deadline with friends and family, whereby you guarantee you will finish this script by a certain date, your fear of public humiliation can spur you all the way to FADE OUT.
The simple fact is that whatever you do, you must do something, or else fear can devour your creativity.
Two of the greatest American writers, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, wound their way to Hollywood and worked as screenwriters. Read these quotes below, and note the palpable sense of fear:
“I think I have had about all of Hollywood I can stand. I feel bad, depressed, dreadful sense of wasting time. I imagine most of the symptoms of blow-up or collapse. I may be able to come back later, but I think I will finish this present job and return home. Feeling as I do, I am actually afraid to stay here much longer.”
– William Faulkner
“My only hope is that you will have a moment of clear thinking. That you’ll ask some intelligent and disinterested person to look at the two scripts. Some honest thinking would be valuable to the enterprise right now than an effort to convince people you’ve improved it. I am utterly miserable at seeing months of work and thought negated in one hasty week. I hope you’re big enough to take this letter as it’s meant–a desperate plea to restore the dialogue to its former quality…all those touches that were both natural and new. Oh, Joe, can’t producers every be wrong? I’m a good writer–honest I though you were going to play fair.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald to producer Joseph Mankiewicz
Faulkner? Fitzgerald? Reduce to “I’m actually afraid to stay here much longer” and “I’m a good writer–honest?”
Are you kidding me?!
This is what fear can do – eat your creativity alive.
So here’s a counterintuitive piece of advice:
Don’t avoid your fear.
Don’t run away from it.
Rather – acknowledge it.
Feel it.
Let it be.
Let it breathe.
Let it take you deeper into the core of your emotional self.
You will learn things there you can learn in no other place. Emotions, memories, experiences have collected in that inner place for years, untouched because most people never go there.
If you can get curious about why you are afraid, what are the particular elements behind your fears, you may discover a deep reservoir of personal insights and, almost assuredly, great story ‘stuff’ as well.
Once you know that you can go there, experience your fears, and survive that process, what you may discover over time in going there and coming back is:
Courage.
The courage to give yourself.
To your creativity…
To your stories…
Each one a great unknown…
Waiting for what you will find in your creative journey.
[Originally posted September 18, 2009]
“Don’t think! Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.”
~ Ray Bradbury
Or as someone else put it “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.”
“There is no spoon.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO0pcWxcROI&feature=relmfu
I’m afraid of everything when I write a script. I agonize over whether or not I have a good concept and if I should pursue the story further. Unfortunately for my Mom, she has to listen to me ask her the same questions everyday:
If this was a movie, would you watch it?
Are you just saying that because I’m your daughter?
Do you think I should stop?
Are you sure?!
Fine.
Thank you for reposting this, Scott. Your thinking and perspective on this desolating aspect of the creative process is a prayer from the desert answered. Pax.
I’m in a phase with my writing where fear isn’t the big issue. Maybe because all my fear is used up in other parts of my life and there’s none left to allocate to writing! But maybe also because I’m in a stage in my life overall where I feel comfortable with experimentation and failure. “Permission to fail” is, in my experience, a powerful and freeing component of a creative endeavor.
Am I the only one out there that sees a problem with the WAY Hollywood treats writers as the main reason for the fear bug?
You quote two writing legends, who, once they started to engage with Hollywood started to lose their way and their sanity.
I once saw you tweet a quote from Budd Schulberg’s “The Disenchanted” (The writer is the most powerful person in this town – never let him figure that out) And it turns out to be the most truthful quote about Hollywood I have ever read.
Also – there’s Rod Serling’s “The Velvet Alley” that was part of Playhouse 90, which pulls the curtain back on the Hollywood trick when a drunk producer spills the beans to a young writer about how they have no ideas and simply feed off the writers to keep themselves lunching and schmoozing and living a fantasy life compared to the average working man.
Nothing has changed except the amount of cash a writer can extrapolate from the studios with a sale.
Fear has a very deliberate source. It’s not some accident of writing – even though writing can be a frightening task.
Writers should reject the notion that “fear” is some phantom from nowhere that’s standing in their way. What fear really is – is a smokescreen intentionally placed in your way and kept there by those who have successfully crossed the line to the other side.
When William Goldman said “nobody knows nothing” that was just him preaching from the other side.
Valid point, Michael. Here I was trying to write about the existential fear of writing, but did provide evidence from Faulkner and Fitzgerald which obviously demonstrate the impact of the Hollywood system on them creatively.
As a balancing point, there’s the Max Millimeter post Why We Hate Writers, which goes to your point: Writers have enormous power in that we can create ideas, we understand and can craft stories. And THEY can’t survive without stories and the people who write them.
Which circling back to my OP is really the subtext: Don’t let fear, of whatever sort, get in the way of embracing the Spirit of the Spec. We DO have power, the power of creativity, individual initiative, knowledge of the craft, etc.
Sounds like I should do a follow-up post.
Thanks for that, Michael.
Michael’s post struck a chord with me as well. It’s fear of being ripped off. I know that’s irrational and the solution is to just “break through that wall” and send the scripts to everyone, but the fear remains.
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