The Actual Fear

I'm going to try to reign in my stream of consciousness style madness to address one of reasons it was so difficult for me to start writing this novel.

At this point in my writing career, I've penned easily over 3 million words. I've written stories I don't remember and I've been told that my work passes snuff in the ways that matter. This isn't a brag, (I've been doing this for a long time) I'm confident in my skills, but writing as a job feels entirely different from writing for myself.

And this story is special. I've been conceptualizing it for ten years. When it was a concept only, it was safe. Now that I'm trying to render it into a cohesive, tangible existence, it feels fragile.

I was afraid I going to break it. Dash it to pieces before it was even finished. Honestly, I was paralyzed by thought of not doing the idea justice.

I concluded, after much discussion with a trusted friend and an undue amount of self deliberation, that stories, like ideas, are invincible. This tale may feel like a child of my intellectual and creative endeavors, but like all children, it is going to do what it wants. No matter how much "parenting" I try to administer, it's going to morph and evolve and adapt into its own being. My job is to support it; help it when it needs help and let it go off when it wants to. Like any child, though it is undeveloped, it is tougher than it looks. All I have to do give it a little guidance and a safe place to learn.

My actual fear is that the finished product, no matter how many times rewritten, will not look like my vision. I have since realized that it most certainly won't look the way I pictured it in the end. If I allow it to grow as it wants, it will turn out so much better.

A heavy hand cannot guide, it can only stifle, despite its best intentions.