Get Started #2: Face Down Your Fears
This article is for: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced—i.e. ALL of us!
I want to show you another method to help you conquer your fears and get writing. Unlike the 15-minute method, which side-steps your fears, this method tackles your fears head-on.
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Because of this, it does something particularly important: it gives you a chance to learn why your fears are wrong—and that means that, over the long term, you can neutralize them and maybe even make them go away forever.
(Well, at least some of them, sometimes…)
And this is a vital step toward happy creation, because while fear is a natural, healthy emotion in some situations, fear about writing just holds you back. It stops you experimenting, it makes you think your poems are terrible, it gives you agonizing writer’s block.
That’s no good! So while to some extent, fear is natural at the start of a creative process because you’re doing something you’ve never done before, your fears are not helpful, and you need to beat them!
Here’s How To Beat Your Fears and Get Writing
Step 1: What are you afraid of?
To beat your fears, you’ve got to know what they are. So the first step is to list them out.
Take a blank page in your notebook, and write down your top fears about writing. Don’t filter and don’t judge yourself—just write.
For some of you, this will be all too easy—your fears are in your head all the time! Take this as a chance to get them out of your head.
But for some, it may be hard to write down anything at first, because you don’t think you know what your fears actually are. That’s OK: our fears like to hide their little heads in the dirt so we can’t challenge them!
But you can dig them out like this:
Get yourself a blank page, and turn it to landscape so it’s wide.
Draw lines to create 3 columns: 2 narrower ones on the left, and one wider one on the right. Put these headings in your columns: Event; Feeling; Thought.
In the Event column, write down what it is that you’re struggling to do.
It could be “Starting a new draft,” or “Trying to get back into poetry,” or just “Writing.”In the Feeling column, next to what you just wrote, write down how you feel when you try to do that thing.
For example: Terrified, Sick, Tearful, Despair, Worried, Humiliated, Panic.Finally, in the Thoughts column, write down any thought that goes through your head as you experience those Feelings.
Here are some thoughts you might have:
I’m no good at writing poetry
I don’t know what I’m doing
I’ll never be a good poet
I don’t know enough about poetry
This poem is useless
All my poems are useless
People will think I’m stupid
Writing poetry is a waste of time and I should do something useful instead
People will laugh at me and/or my poetry
Nobody likes my poems
Poetry is pointless
I don’t deserve to do what I want
I’m not clever enough to write poetry….
And so on, and on, and on…
Living with beliefs like that is not much fun! So let’s get straight to the next step, where you fight back.
Step 2: Pick a fight with your fear
The bottom line is, YOUR FEARS ARE WRONG.
They are based on understandable things, but they’re wrong. They’re trying to help you out, but they’re wrong.
And you can prove it.
Just pick a moment when you’ve got some time, about 15-30 minutes, and do this:
1. Write one of your fearful beliefs at the top of a page
“Nobody likes my poems”
I like to put it in quotation marks, so that it looks like someone’s saying it—someone who might be misguided and wrong!
2. Underneath, create two columns, titled “FOR” and “AGAINST”
“Nobody likes my poems”
FOR AGAINST
3. In the FOR column, write down everything you can think of that backs up the fear.
This is a chance to wallow deeper in glorious self-pity than you have ever done before!
Write down all the terrible things you beat yourself up with—get them all out in the open.
So the FOR column might start to look like this:
- I’ve never had a poem published
- 16 editors have rejected my poems so far
- I didn’t win our writers’ group poetry contest
- The group basically said my last poem was a mess
- My family never liked my poems
4. When you’re done wallowing, it’s time to get out, dry yourself off, and get real!
In the AGAINST column, you are now going to write down all the evidence you can think of that contradicts the original belief, and the evidence you put in the FOR column.
AGAINST
+ OK, so I’ve never had a poem published, but I only started submitting last year! That’s not very long. And it’s normal to get a lot of rejections—even for experienced poets. There’s just a lot of competition. Heck, Stephen King had enough rejection letters to fill a huge nail before he got published! He’s not a poet, but it still shows you just have to get a lot of rejections.
+ If I keep going, I’m bound to find magazines that are a good fit for me sooner or later.
+ So I didn’t win one competition! That’s just a one-off and doesn’t mean anything about my poems overall. Maybe I’ll win next year!
+ The last poem I took to the group really was a mess—it was just an early draft, so no wonder. I know I can do better than that, so I shouldn’t take that last group to heart.
+ But the group did give me some good ideas for developing it, so I know I can make this poem better too!
+ My mother wouldn’t have known a good poem from a burned pancake. There’s no reason why I should let her judgement affect me—she just didn’t know anything about poetry! I should trust the judgment of people who do know poetry.
+ The woman who led that workshop I went to last year said that she liked my voice and the humor of my poems—and she’s a real, published poet!
+ John loved the poem about the dog so much he asked me for a signed copy of it!
Keep going onto a second page if you need to—it’s good to make the AGAINST column a lot longer than the FOR!
You might notice that the AGAINST column sounds a lot more grown-up than the FOR. That’s no accident!
Often our fears are hangovers from our ancient past, we were little tots. Back then, it was hard for us to see things in an accurate perspective.
As adults, we can think more widely: we can look at context, we can consider multiple explanations for an event, and we can take account of how things could be different in the future. These are skills you have. In fact, if you’ve ever helped a child get over her fear of daycare, or a big test, or going on a trip, you can do this!
Step 3: What does the world look like now?
So you’ve written down your fear, backed it up with the worst ammunition you could give it, and then done your best to take it down.
Where does that leave you?
The last step is to write a sentence or two that sum up how you feel about this fear now, taking account of all that you wrote.
For example:
“I’m sometimes afraid that no one likes my poems or will ever like them, especially when I get a rejection or my group doesn’t like a draft. But actually, people have liked my poems—including some, like the workshop leader, whose judgement I really respect. So on reflection, I’m sure that plenty of people will like my poems, including editors, provided I keep writing and submitting. Yes there will always be some poems that don’t work, but that’s OK—I’ll just keep writing and focus on the better ones!”
Doing this solidified that more balanced, adult perspective that you generated, and gives you a clear take-away to remember.
Step 4: Tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day
If Steps 1-3 seem like they will take a long time, that’s true—they will.
But it’s time well spent.
Having done that full process once, you’ll have something you can look back at next time you need it. So you won’t need to do it again and again.
In fact, over time, you should find that the positive thoughts you’ve generated will start to come to you by themselves, when you need them.
And eventually, maybe the fear that has you gripped right now, will simply…. disappear. Magicked into nothingness by your refusal to let it beat you!
At that point, you’ll know that the fear is wrong, and it may never come up for you again.
And isn’t that something that’s worth a little effort right now?
Next Steps
Find a time when you’ve got about 30 minutes or more to yourself.
Think of a poetry task that you want to do but which is difficult for you right now. It might be starting a new poem, redrafting one you’ve had on the go for ages, or sharing poems in a new place—anything!
Using this topic, go through steps 1 to 3. Let it change your perspective on the “problem.”
Now, right now, start work on whatever it was that was scaring you—so you lock in the progress and make something happen!
