I always say that I’m only scared of two things; doctors and dentists. For a person who spends a lot of time in the world of sci fi, horror and paranormal fiction, they seem like pretty pedestrian and boring things to be afraid of. But recently I have realised there is a third thing to add to that list... Failure.
It’s no secret that for the last four or five years I haven’t written much. I’ve tried to blame that on everything from work stress to perimenopause. The big hiatus in my writing career came just as I felt like I was finally getting to the top of my game. I’d been published in all the major Australian sci fi and horror mags and I had two publishers asking me to edit and re-submit my novels. Even when I picked up my stories after their one month stewing period, I actually thought to myself ‘wow, I wrote that?’
And then it all stopped.
My natural instinct is to make a plan and fix things, so I made my lists and life-changes to try and counter all the things I was blaming for not writing. But when I finally gave myself permission to sit back down at the computer, I had this overwhelming belief that I couldn’t do it anymore. That I’d lost the ability to write. I had ideas aplenty, but was afraid to put them on the page because I was convinced it would be terrible.
I’ve written blog posts on how the first draft of every story is awful. Stephen King calls it writing with the door closed. But after my other successes, I was expecting to hit the ground running and have something great every time I wrote something. When the first couple of sentences came out as rubbish, I gave up.
I need to give myself permission to write badly again. To fail again. And honestly, nobody cares about my writing besides me. If my work gets rejected, even those horrible rejections where the editor tells you that it’s awful (yes, that happens) that won’t actually change me in the eyes of any of my friends or family.
Trying and failing takes a lot of courage. And I hate to be afraid of anything (besides doctors and dentists, because that just makes sense). This week I’m going to sit at my computer and write a bunch of rubbish and no-one else in the whole wide world is going to see it. Then I’m going polish it up and hope to find a diamond. Or a zircon. Seriously, even some quartz would be good right now. Wish me luck!