Good morning! Hope all is well with everyone as we start this Thursday morning or afternoon, wherever you wonderful people are 😉
Fear, everyone has felt fear at one time or the other. Don’t lie, you know you have. As a child, we had fear of strangers and storms. As adults, we have many fears. Maybe we fear financial issues, for our children, the future… etc. There are a lot of fears in this world, but I want to talk about the fear as a writer.
The moment I hit submit on Ghost Lover, the first book I published in May 2012, I was sweating. My palms were damp, my heart was racing, in easy terms, I was a mess. What if nobody likes my writing? What if this is a mistake? What if… What if… What if… Then the emails started coming from readers that fell in love with Jared and Jessie. The fear was alleviated for a moment, then came the next book and the next.
Does my fear ease with each book I publish? Some, but not completely. I’m always afraid of the unknown. Even though my books are poured over and over with edits and rewrites and such, I still have that fear that I’m sending out my work with flaws. Even the best-edited book has flaws and I have to remind myself of that. My fans are so precious and let me know every day the pleasure they get from the words I put on the page, but still, I feel like I could’ve added more to the story, went over it one more time, or even changed something.
Then there’s the fear of not selling a single book, yikes…. Yes, that’s a fear. In January, my sales went on a downward spiral and I had to catch my breath. After an amazing end of 2016, it was like a kick in the gut. But, as I sought out other authors to see if it was happening to them, they confirmed that they too were seeing a sharp decline in sales. Even the authors that normally sell thousands of copies a month were down to hundreds. Although that should make me feel better, it only made my fear worse. Had people stopped reading? LOL! Yes, it was an irrational fear, but it still came through this ditsy blonde head.
Then, the sales started to rise. Yes, my fear was going away, but then a new fear arose. Could I do more to keep that from happening again? The truth is, no. We can’t control what people do or trends, so, I picked myself up off the pity floor and moved forward.
So, as a writer, what do you fear?
As always, good writing and May God Bless You…
Stephanie Hurt - Romance Author 
To be completely honest, I fear the fear. And that I don’t write fast enough 🙂
I know what you mean! Every time I publish a book, I know the fear is coming and it scares me to death…
Fear is the numero uno thing that holds me back and has kept me from being published, kept me from finishing my SYTYCW final draft, kept me from making that story the best it can be, because I fear I don’t have the chops to put the story I visualize on paper (or Word, as the case may be).
Fear sucks.
I have confidence in you! I felt the same way. It took me almost twenty years to publish my first book. And then it took my assistant finding my manuscripts and pushing me. You can do this, I know you can.