Why You Should Keep Writing When You’re Terrified of It
Have you written something new, and these thoughts invaded your mind:
“People aren’t going to buy this!”
“What if somebody leaves you a scathing review?”
“You’ve never written anything like this before. What are you doing? You’re going to mess up!”
I’m writing something new right now: a short story. It‘s scaring the sh*t out of me!
It’s completely different from any of my previous writing projects. Why? I’m publishing it on Amazon. The whole world will see it (under a pen name, of course).
Someone may buy the book. Someone may leave a fiery, negative review of my book.
Oh well, what else am I supposed to do? It’s a writer’s life. You learn from feedback.
How Did It Come to This?
According to one source, the unofficial minimum word count for publishing Amazon eBooks is 2,500 words. I never in my life thought I would write stories longer than merely 2,000 words. When I created an Overwatch fanfic over 8,000 words, my mindset changed. Meant to be a breezy 500-word short, I had to break it into chapters for the follower who requested the story.
I was deep into that fanfic. Why not produce the same ritual of writing short stories for Amazon?
Long ago, I had a dream to be a fantastic novelist only to slip it under the rug with excuses. My biggest one was writing clear dialogue. All the quotation inserts, commas, and when to start new paragraphs when characters spoke confused my young mind. I switched to scriptwriting instead. I had fewer grammatical rules to worry about.
Now, I’m better at writing prose. My dialogue writing is decent. I’m sure I’ve made some mistakes, but I’m not afraid to revise them.
You must let go of the fear of making mistakes. Eventually, you will create some writing whoopsies. It’s all part of the writer’s journey. I’m sure you know somebody who hasn’t come out as a successful writer without a trail of failures and errors.
