Fear

I have this unhealthy fear that I will not be a good writer because there is a part of me that wants to remain hidden, part of me that wishes to remain anonymous. Conventional wisdom is to find the rawness of one’s soul, bare it for the world, and it is this act of complete transparency that allows one to write authentically. For instance, Whitney shares the story of burning down her apartment, feeling unloved, fucking men who don’t want her; she opens her soul to the world. I can connect with her writing on a visceral level (isn’t this what all good writing aspires to do?). Even though I connect with her writing, I’m not sure I want to be so open with complete strangers; my story will no longer be my own. Do I have to if I want to write real, authentic characters? Do I have to share my life story in order to find connection with the wider world? Can I not allow my life and experiences to inform my characters from behind the scenes?

My fear is that I make it: I become a successful novelist and then my life becomes open to interpretation, open for discussion. I know how boastful and overly confident the statement is about making it but if that’s not the dream, why even pursue it (for me, for me…I shouldn’t have to state that what I write pertains only to me—I know nothing of you or your dreams so why would I ever purport to speak for you?)? Here’s the thing, though; I don’t know how I feel about people as a collective whole. Individually, people are who they are but, as a mass, I can’t tell if our inherent nature is to be selfish, vindictive, and only out for one’s self or if we are naturally good. I watch my nephew, who is five, run from one extreme to another. He believes everything in sight belongs to him and he has a right to it. Rules of every game are up for interpretation by him if he starts to lose. He is a little terrorist at times. And then, in the blink of an eye, he is sweet and kind and gentle; there is a tenderness and understanding of the world he inhabits that is almost heart-breakingly beautiful.

This is most people. We vacillate between the hard bits of ourselves and the the soft bits. En masse though—or when the unexpected occurs and we are knocked from our moorings—humans tend to devolve. We contract into comfort, into communities we know, ostracizing others at the benefit of ours. And then, we can open our homes to the destitute and downtrodden. We are saint. We are sinner.

Even now, in this writing, my fear is causing me to withdraw, to lambaste an unseen mob, to worry about things I have no business worrying about. All I can do is write my truth, in whatever form that takes. There is a quote in Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life¹ about all a reader wants—whether fiction or not—is to know the author a little better. This has always scared me. It hardens my fear, sharpens it, takes a knife to the bulbous end and whittles it to a point. What if I am unlovable? What if there is something inherent in me that turns people away from me? I used to think everybody felt this way, thought about all the ways in which they didn’t measure up. I have learned that is not the truth.

I am rambling and these thoughts are half-formed, as are all my thoughts at this hour and on this site. Writing authentically, baring my worst fears about myself, opening up the tender seat of me to the critiques of others (or maybe to the adulation of others? I’m not there yet) makes my teeth chatter and my body freeze. The yearning is there to be known but it is a cautious yearning. A fearful yearning. The solution is to continue to write, isn’t it? For me, that is always the solution.

Footnotes

1. I highly, highly recommend this book. ↩