At The Intersection of Fear and Creativity

“Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome and fear hates uncertain outcome.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic

The way I look at it is sure, fear hates creativity, but creativity also hates fear. Creativity would rather sit quietly by, maybe in the back row and let fear have its day. Fear and creativity have a dysfunctional relationship; volatile and co-dependent one might say. But maybe one can’t exist without the other. Maybe they actually need each other to produce the really good stuff. Maybe mildly safe creative projects are fine. But as artists, writers, and creatives, we want better than fine.

When I started writing The Magic of Missing You (Outskirts Press, November 2020), it was supposed to be a short story; a great way to spend a few hours on the weekend. Well, those few hours turned into a big idea; my first novel-soon to be released. An idea bigger than I expected and before I knew it, some previously untapped part of my creative brain told fear to move on over and take a seat. Told fear to shut up and write.

It took me a little over a year to write that novel and while it was out being edited, fear showed back up, louder and meaner than ever. Fear didn’t say, “What if it sucks?” Fear said, “It most definitely sucks.” Fear could have said, “People might laugh at the fact that you thought you could write a book.” Fear said, “Oh people are going to publicly mock the mess you created. You should probably keep this to yourself. For your own safety.” My creativity hid in a closet.

What did I do? Most of the time, I listened to fear. On a rare occasion it was as if fear was absent from school for a few days and I had visions of people loving the book. For brief moments of time, I believed in myself and my little story, until fear’s vacation was over and showed back up. This went on for YEARS.

In the meantime, I wrote and published a children’s book, Before You Were Ours, with a local publisher. Safe. No one in their right mind would criticize a sweet little children’s book. There was literally no danger of fear showing up. I queried agents for The Magic of Missing You, because as challenging as it is to break into the book world as a completely unknown author, it was safe. My logic was that if an agent believed in my work enough to sign me, I would have the confirmation I needed that I didn’t suck. I never got that validation and after over one-hundred rejections (ouch), I decided to self-publish.

When my final rejection came, this very kind literary agent who easily could have sent a form letter opened with, “Your writing is beautiful.” She went on to turn it down, but it didn’t matter on that day. The rest of the words in the email are a bit of a blur. Something like, she didn’t think she could sell it in the current market.

But for some reason on that day, the only four words that mattered were, “Your writing is beautiful,” from a woman qualified to make that statement. Not my mom, not my friend, but a human being qualified to make such an assessment. On that day, I told fear to have at it, to go ahead and do its thing. And I made the commitment to finally tell it to go to hell.

The Magic of Missing You is due out mid November, 2020. Fear still sits at the table with me in the morning while I have my coffee; it still lurks beneath the keyboard waiting for me to say or write something stupid. But I am learning to allow my creativity and fear to coexist. For two reasons. First because I’ve tried to get fear to leave and apparently it isn’t going anywhere. Like the little scar on my face, I just have to accept it. But secondly, because I think maybe fear makes creativity better. Maybe fear pushes the boundaries of creativity in a way that results in a final product that is truly special, and far better than good. And at the end of the day, if it sucks, it sucks.

But I did a thing. I wrote a book.

If you want to hear from an expert on creativity, pick up Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. This book changed my creative life. And once a year, when I need a pep talk, I turn to the audiobook version of this masterpiece and listen to every word as if my future creative self depends upon it.

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