I’m shin-deep in writing a new novel and running up against anxieties that always plague me when I start something new. I have regular freak outs, wondering what the hell I’m doing. I doubt myself, thinking on particularly bad days that I have no business trying to write this book. I wake up in the middle of the night with ideas and problems and solutions and random sentences in my head. As I’ve said before, the notes section of my iPhone is fascinating.
You would think I’d learn from previous novel-writing experiences that this is all part of the proverbial process. But every time, the anxieties feel new. And every time, I fight them. Somehow, I think that a true writer, a confident writer, wouldn’t have all these nagging anxieties. It’s only after reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic that I started to consider that maybe this is all normal. Maybe it’s even good.
Gilbert is all about accepting the fear that comes with creative pursuit. The fear is inevitable. The trick is to embrace it instead of wasting time chasing it away.
Gilbert identifies specific anxieties that come with her writing process (and I have to think these apply to most writers):
“Ah, this is the part of the process where I wish I’d never engaged with this idea at all.”
“This is the part where I tell myself that I’ll never write a good sentence again.”
“This is the part where I beat myself up for being a lazy loser.”
“This is the part where I begin fantasizing in terror about how bad the reviews are going to be–if this thing even gets published at all.”
“This is the part where I panic that I’ll never be able to make anything again.”
Her conclusion:
“Over the years of devotional work, though, I found that if I just stayed with the process and didn’t panic, I could pass safely through each stage of anxiety and on to the next level.”
The truth is that the anxieties make me a better writer. They create a tension that forces my brain to go into overdrive. It’s in that overdrive state that I write well. It’s like I’m trying to prove the negative voice in my head wrong. Or something. If there were no anxieties, it wouldn’t be exhilarating. It wouldn’t be interesting. It would be rather dull. The anxieties make those wonderful moments of flow–when the book seems to write itself–that much better, magical even. Now if only I could let this comfort me when I wake up at 2 am in a panic…