Fear & Bravery

I’ve been reading Veronica Roth’s DIVERGENT and INSURGENT the last few days. Of all the themes in her story, the ones that stick to me most are bravery and fear and how they’re so intertwined. In DIVERGENT, the main character has to have enough bravery to face her fears before she becomes an adult in society’s eyes. Then there’s war, which brings in another level of fear and bravery. For the sake of this blog post, the rest of the story is irrelevant—but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the books. If you’re interested in YA dystopian stories, or even if you’re not, I recommend reading them. I’m obsessed with them. I read INSURGENT in about twenty-four hours because I had to know what fear drove the entire plot.

This has gotten me thinking about my own fears. Right off, four big ones come to mind (although if I were a character in DIVERGENT, I’m sure I’d have the average of ten to fifteen fears). The first three may be relatively normal.

FIRE: When I was in elementary school, some fire safety people (who may have been firefighters for all my traumatized childhood mind remembers) brought in burned items to help with their demonstration. I think their burned items were supposed to encourage us to stop, drop, and roll among other things, but what I remember most is the burned teddy bear. I remember its charred fur and melted eyes and mouth and the grimace on its face. I’ve been scared of fire ever since.

WATER: I can’t tell you where this fear comes from, but I know I don’t like water, especially when it’s opaque and especially at night. I had nightmares the first night I stayed in Venice because we’d arrived after dark and walked around the city. I don’t like lakes and really don’t like the ocean. I’m leaving this at that.

DEATH: Mine and others and the ways it can happen. Not to say I’ve ever experienced anything like what the main character in DIVERGENT and INSURGENT goes through, but read those books for more on this.

And then there’s my fourth fear. It’s not so normal, at least for the average person, but I’d bet it’s huge among my writer friends.

NO AGENT, NO PUBLISHED BOOK, NOT EVER: I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I’ve been trying to find an agent since college, though only in the last few months have I learned enough that I feel like I might really have a shot at this. Still, there’s no guarantee that I’ll sign with an agent, no guarantee that I’ll ever have a book published. And that scares me, not quite the way my other fears do, but in a way can wrench my gut and leave me breathless.

Beyond this huge writer fear, I have a couple of others. I had them in college, but it wasn’t until I found and starting working with my CPs that I realized how much they’re a factor in my daily writing life.

MY CPs COMMENTS ON MY WRITING: I was spoiled by my first CP—she loved my manuscript and still has more confidence in its chances for success than pessimistic me. Still, I was terrified to read her comments. What if she hated it? What if she wanted me to rewrite the whole thing because there was some huge plot hole or bad plot line? However, her suggestions were mostly minor, and that was good for me, though it hasn’t rid me of my fear. My fear comes back again every time I get comments back from someone in my CP group. I let those emails pile up until I’m crushed by the weight of them.

MY COMMENTS ON MY CPs WRITING: What if I’m too harsh? What if I don’t tell them enough? What if—and yes, this has happened—I tell them their stories would be so much better if they rewrote the first five chapters? (See my post Let’s NOT Start at the Very Beginning for more on that.) Even worse, because I love what my CPs write, what if despite all my comments, despite all my help and all our efforts, they don’t get an agent either? I want my CPs’ books to be published because I want other readers to love them as much as I do.

What the main character is DIVERGENT and INSURGENT keeps learning over and over again is that despite her fears, she has to keep going. She has to be brave in any way she knows how because she doesn’t have any other choice. This is true for me, too. I have fears about writing, about my CPs, about never finding an agent, but that doesn’t mean I stop. It means I push through the fears and keep going in hopes that someday all this will pay off.