Writing Meets the Fear Factor

Never, not once since I was seven years old and sat down at the kitchen table to write my autobiography, have I ever been afraid to begin writing a book.  Not even after my brother told me the first few pages of that autobiography sounded like I was a snob.

I wasn’t afraid to start novel number seven after novels one through six were rejected enough times that I ran out of agents and small publishers and finally sent the unpublished manuscripts to join the others on the top shelf of my closet.

There was no fear factor after Gloria Steinem’s agent told me I couldn’t write, nor after my first book publisher (Hartley and Marks, who competed against two other publishers for The Ultimate Challenge) got gobbled up by a conglomerate that did not want to continue with the book.

Writing brings with it a host of soul-wrenching issues, but for me, fear has never been one of them.  Until now.  That particular emotion as connected to working on a book has been so far off my personal radar screen, it’s taken me months to identify it.  In spite of fashioning an entire lesson around it for a writing workshop series I taught last fall, it never occurred to me that what I might be suffering from is fear.

Now that it has occurred to me, the symptoms are obvious:  night sweats, roiling stomach, closing throat, the occasional onset of hyperventilation.  Suspiciously similar to many of the physical side effects of cancer treatment, it’s been easy to blame my inability to take up the project again, on that.

Saving Elizabeth.  The heart wrenching, complex, inspiring story of the largest animal sanctuary rescue in history.  It’s an amazing story.  I witnessed it.  I participated in it.  I blogged about it and was praised for it.  I’m in love with the book this tale was meant to be.  Several agents are interested in it.  I’ve written an outline and two chapters for it.  The little ten-month detour for cancer hasn’t changed any of that.

Except, all of a sudden, I’m afraid.  And now that I’ve opened a writing-related door never before in existence, I’ve discovered an endless, self-perpetuating clutch of things to be afraid of.  I’ve waited too long and interest has waned.  I’m almost a year behind on ranch chores and work that (sort of) pays the bills, so how I will I have time to write another book?  Publishers might not be interested in a project written by a woman of a certain age who is bald, eyebrow and eyelash challenged, and who statistically has only a 60% chance of being alive in five years.

So, is that it?  Is that going to be my cancer legacy?  An introduction to the fear of writing?  Hmmm.  Could there be a challenge coming on here?  Or at least the edge of one?  The kind of challenge that feeds me?  “You can’t do that.”  “You shouldn’t do that.”  “Oh yeah?  Watch me!”

Okay.  Challenge one.  Return to the blog.  Keep Facebook alive.  Become a Twitter queen.  What?  Agent number two who loves the idea of Saving Elizabeth told me a year ago it’s all about Twitter.  “You have to have at least 5000 Twitter followers to convince a publisher you’ve got enough of a platform to sell a book,” she told me.  “And Twitter is how people will find your blog.”

I decided that taking advice and being obedient might be a unique way for me to battle this new fear of writing.  I opened a Twitter account and sent out my first Tweet.  In the course of six months, I managed to collect four followers of dubious intent.  Then I knuckled down and began to seriously research all the advice I could find on writing a successful blog.

Writing a blog has all the potential pitfalls of writing memoir, only worse.  A few months ago a friend told me about a relative who had started a blog about her cancer experience.  My ears perked up.

“How was it?” I asked eagerly.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “She seemed to be very focused on just herself.”

Yikes.

The comment reminded me of a recent book review by Susan Chira in the New York Times, who couldn’t resist saying about Susanna Sonnenber’s memoir SHE MATTERS: “And because Sonnenberg does not spare herself, there are places where she comes off as narcissistic — a risk in any memoir.”

These are probably the sorts comments that led Gore Vidal to believe, and to be quoted in his obituary as saying, he’s the only writer not writing about himself and that those of us who do are reflecting the arrogance of being American – which is why American writing isn’t read anywhere else.

Is that true?

I do know that this sort of research in the name of pushing back my recently acquired fear of writing brings a mixed bag of results.  Some fear is a good thing.  It’s a rare entry that can spring directly from the heart and emotion of a day’s events and end up as anything more meaningful than a personal diary entry.  Diaries are not art without the cold, hard hand of a ruthless editor coupled with keen awareness of an intended reader.  No doubt there are writers whose brilliance flows straight from the brain to the page without the need of a single adjustment, but I’m not one of them.  For me, there has to be a built-in delay switch between writing and publishing my posts.  Duly noted.

Trying not to be deterred, I googled every word, phrase and combination of them to find out what I should and shouldn’t do to get those Twitter followers, to create that irresistible blog that would prove I could sell what publishers will buy.  (Once I get over this new fear of writing thing.)

Highlights of what I found for blogging advice:

Don’t write about yourself in any form that might look like any kind of diary whatsoever.

Use your name in your blog title, not something cute or alliterative (like Writing, Llamas and Life).

If you haven’t published a blog entry for six months, shut down the blog immediately — IMMEDIATELY — and start over.

Don’t write about yourself.

Tell writer wannabes how to write, or how to get published, or how to blog, or how to create a platform, or how to make money writing.

Don’t write about yourself.

Blog at least once a week, but not every day.

Blog only on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Don’t write about yourself.

Don’t blog your unpublished works.

Blog your book as you write it.

Don’t be whiny or insecure.

Promote your expertise to impress agents and publishers.

Don’t write a post for your blog that says you’re looking for an agent or a publisher.

Don’t write about yourself.

By the time I was done researching, which managed to eat up a few months of my time, my fear had become twisted into something else.  I was beginning to feel manipulated, squashed, silenced.

Silenced?  Bingo!  Now I remember.  Writing is about voice.  About speaking out.  About shouting from the rooftops in a way that gets someone — even if it’s just one other someone — to shout back.  Hmmm.  This feels much better than paralyzing fear.

Is it possible that cheeky girl, strident young woman, impudent feminist is still alive in me somewhere?  Is she capable of standing up one more time, marching across the room, slamming the offensive door to fear and bolting it shut?  I don’t know.  There is going to be a cancer legacy for me, like there’s been a legacy for every other life changing event in my life.   I just need to be smart enough, strong enough and old enough to reject fear as a suitable one.