Be Brave and Revise (Or, Alternately, My Struggle With Fear)

Before I get into this post, I want to say that I am not complaining about any of the wonderful things that have come my way. If this post comes across that way, that isn't how I intend it. I have been blessed with manymanymany good things, but life is fraught with difficulty no matter how many good things happen to you. So I'm writing this post because one of my goals, when I started this blog, was to be honest about my mistakes and the things I struggle with. I haven't done that recently, and I want to do it now. That's all.

Anyway. Enough with the disclaimers.

The rough draft of D2 was the hardest thing I have ever written, and I had no idea why. Why, when I sat down at my computer in the morning, would I do anything, ANYTHING to avoid typing a single word in the word document? Why would I write a sentence and then immediately delete it? Why did I develop such an affinity for cleaning instead of writing?

I explained it to myself several different ways, desperate to figure out what had turned the hobby and job I loved into something I regarded with such dread. And after discarding every explanation I came up with, I was finally able to land on the one that was actually true: it was all related to fear.

Something I have not shared, because I wasn't sure how to share it, is that I am A Person With Anxiety Problems. I have spent many an hour on a therapist's couch. Once I spent several hours breathing into a paper bag, and not just because it smelled nice. Most of that anxiety comes from my constant assessment of other people's opinions about me. Am I making him angry? Am I disappointing her? If I please everyone, I will finally feel safe. I must please everyone, all the time. I have made many unwise decisions in my pursuit of safety above all else. Decisions that were often to my detriment and, even worse, to the detriment of the people around me.

So, you can imagine what happened when I entered into a profession in which assessments of my work (and therefore me, or so it often seems to my somewhat neurotic mind) are constant, abundant, and very, very public. But in case you can't, I'll tell you: the anxiety got much worse.

Writing used to feel safe because it was so private. I could keep it to myself, and decide only after I was finished if I would show it to anyone. So when I was writing, I was secure; I could do whatever I wanted. But it didn't feel that way with D2. I was constantly aware that people would read what I was writing. And the assessment of other people's opinions crept into my safe space. What will she think of this? What if he doesn't like this? What if I let them all down? I have to please everyone, so that I can feel safe.

Several weeks ago I met with my pastor, and he asked me, in the course of our conversation, something to the effect of: do you think it's significant that, as someone who struggles so much with fear, you chose to write a book about bravery? Well if I didn't before, I do now, Jason.

Tris is someone who can step off the edge of a building not knowing what will meet her at the bottom. The moments in which she faces her fears are largely physical, far louder and more intense than any of our bravest moments will ever be. I don't know why I didn't realize that I wrote about her because I longed for that quality of hers that is so distinctive to me: she chooses the true thing instead of the safe thing. And what she discovers is that the freedom to become who she wants to be is worth the danger.

What I know now, after much reflection, is that I have brought much of this intense anxiety upon myself, because I have started to make decisions that do not feel safe, like Tris. I have let people down. Hurt them, sometimes. Pissed them off, other times. Surprised them, almost always. Yet I have not been able to translate this newfound insistence upon bravery into my writing.

I've been working with my bodyguards (agent, editor, etc.) to create a safer space to write, one in which I can stop the assessments of other people's opinions before they take me to darker places. But I know that's only a temporary solution, because I've learned from Tris that there aren't really safe places-- or that if there are, I don't really want to be in them, because it's not who I am. The permanent solution is something I learned from another character in DIVERGENT:

"I ignore my fear. When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn't exist." (145)

Writing is about decisions. Your characters make them, but more often, you make them. You decide what you are going to say and what you are not going to say; what you believe and what you do not believe; where you want the story to go and where you do not want it to go. And I don't want to be a writer who is ruled by fear. I want to be the one who says: they may not like it, but this story is as true as possible, so I don't mind.

Anxiety doesn't just disappear. I will probably always be someone who struggles with fear. But I am determined not to consult my fear when I make decisions, in life and in writing.

I think I wrote all this on the off-chance that you, like me, struggle with anxiety-- or just fear in general-- and might benefit from knowing that you're not the only one. Or maybe I just wrote it because there are no moving trains to jump off around here and this was the next best way to face my fears. Either way, it's time to be brave and revise.

MONTH THREE: Fear of Taking Unnecessary Risks

THE TIME HAS COME. Well, actually, I'm late, because I had to skip a month due to unforeseen busy-ness, so the time passed, but now IT HAS COME AGAIN!

This month's random act of bravery involves pop rocks and soda. If you'd like to see past months, involving a slide down an 18-foot vert ramp, a dive into a public fountain, and of course, a jump into a bathtub full of mini marshmallows, those videos are on the right sidebar.

But without further delay...



I swear I'm not speaking in the royal "we" in the beginning, I just edited out the parts where my friend Alice participated.

By the way, this is my friend Alice:
Thanks for your help, AK!

Dear Veronica. Freaking Jump Already. Sincerely, Veronica.

I do actually intend to write a series of blog posts about SCBWI, but today is not the day, because I've got something else on my mind.

I haven't really written in about three weeks. And it doesn't feel good.

So for the past week and a half I've been wondering what the heck is wrong with me. Am I ill? Am I depressed? Do I no longer like to write? THE HORROR.

I keep telling myself the answers to these questions:

A. No. I feel fine.
B. No. I feel fine.
C. I've been writing since sixth grade. If I haven't hated it before now, it's probably not going to happen.

After a week and a half of fretting, I think I have finally isolated the cause of my writer's block, and it's unsurprising, given my personality: fear.

I'm not going to lie to you and say that it's exactly the same now, writing under a book contract. When you have The Contract, writing becomes your job (even if it's a part-time job), because someone is compensating you for it. And not only that, but in The Trilogy Zone, you know that there are people relying on you to make the new book at least as good as the last book. And you are fully aware that several important people are going to read one of your initial drafts. All of this floats around in your mind when you write, because it's awesome, and because it's real, but the unfortunate side effect of this incredible blessing is that it's not the same, because it's not just me and my computer and my desk chair anymore.

But the lesson I am trying to teach myself is: it must become the same.

Like so many of the lessons I try to teach myself, this one is about courage.

Before, I was writing alone, and I felt secure not because I was brave but because no one had a vested interest in how my work turned out, no one but me. This time, people do, and every time I sit down to write I put this pressure on myself for it to be good. I really don't want to let those people down.

I am not, despite how I may seem, insecure about my writing. When I sit down at the keyboard and I shut out everyone else, I know exactly what I'm doing. I don't mean that in an arrogant way-- I don't think I'm perfect or brilliant or that I've learned everything I need to know. I mean that in this space, and at this desk, I am fully convinced of my ability to do good work. This is what I am supposed to do.

But this time, when I sit down, it's hard for me to shut out everyone else, so I have a problem. I have to create space for myself to mess up. Badly. I don't think I realized how scary it is to launch yourself into a draft without knowing where it's going or if anything will work the way you want it to, not because I haven't done it, but because I've never thought about it before. It's like when you're young and you'll just launch yourself off the swings without worrying about how you'll land, and then you grow up and you know about physics and broken bones and fragments of glass potentially waiting in the dirt, and you won't jump anymore. I know a lot more about what screws up a draft now, and that makes it hard for me to jump.

But you can't be afraid when you write. You have to take ownership of your talent and shut out the world's opinions and do the work you love because you love it, and for no other reason. You have to fire your internal editor, who is telling you that every move you make is a mistake. You have to realize that you are the only one who knows your characters so completely that you understand all the inner workings of their stories. But most of all, you just have to get over it and freaking jump already.

Be brave. That's my plan. It's not very sophisticated, but there it is.

(Psst. Myra McEntire also has a post about this today. And it's awesome.)