Writers are by nature intense creatures. I really believe people who are creatively inclined tend to experience life, well, more intensely than other humans.
Combine that with trying to break into or stay afloat in a tough publishing business, and the writerly pursuit is not without its fears and anxieties.
So what is your greatest fear as a writer? A horrible review? People not liking your book? Obscurity? Paper cuts?
I'm working on my first book, and my biggest fear is not finishing. I've written 52K, so the end is in sight, but still, that fear of not finishing remains
That I will let my over-thinking, procrastinating and insane obsession with perfectionism keep me from writing the book I've wanted to write since I was 7 years old.
See what I mean?
Never being good enough no matter how much I practice or how much I read and write.
To love something so much and never be able to share it with others.
To put my soul into something and have it stomped on like dog crap.
RACISM. Majority of people tend to praise Caucasian writers even if they have "poor writingcapabilities." While if you are asians no matter how great you are when it comes to grammar and perfect composition still is you are inferior from these so called group of "White supremacist." Truth be told.
As a rhyming PB author, my greatest fear is that I will go press with a glitch in meter! YIKES! I would die. Ha.
Never finishing a book. And, yep, haven't beat that one yet 🙁
Right now my biggest fear is that I'll send out query letters and never get my book into the hands of an agent.
That I'll never be evaluated for my writing and the 90,000 words of blood, sweat, and tears will be wasted to the system.
I'll move on to my other fears when they're relevant.
My biggest fear is that I'll actually be a raging success. I would rather be solidly midlist with a devoted following who helps keep my sales numbers steady enough to keep selling books to publishers than a J.K. Rowling or Stephen King.
I know it sounds weird. But that's my fear. I know that if it's in God's plan for me to get a book (or more) published, I will. I just have to do everything I can to work toward that goal. Beyond that, it's out of my hands.
I am afraid I will never actually finish my book. There are so many steps after that one, and I'm sure I'll be afraid of those too (never getting published, publishing something no one reads, publishing something everyone says is crap, etc.) if I ever get that far.
That's easy… that every agent I query will reject me and I will never get published.
It's a horrible feeling to create something you're proud of and not be able to find anyone who believes in it the same way you do.
My biggest fear is that I won't have the courage to be completely and utterly transparent in my work. If I'm going to put myself out there, I don't want to be boring.
I suppose that one of my greatest fears at this point,is not enough people in the book market interested in my story, which is about the plight of Indians in the Caribbean in the early 20C.
There could be a lot of things that frighten me as a writer. One of them happened just recently: my computer broke down and I hadn't updated my back-ups yet. very scary.
Then there is, of course, working so hard on something, rewriting, studying the genre and technique, growing in your writing style, sending it off to be looked at…
only to get the response that your writing is a piece of crap. That hasn't happened to me yet, thank god. I hope it never will. *shivers*
That I'm delusional about my writing talent.
That the world ends….
That everyone will tell me to my face that my book is great then laugh behind my back 🙁
Failure.
Whatever form that takes. Whether my writing wasn't good enough, I never get published, my stories don't reach people's emotions the way I want them to.
I'm simply terrified I'll be a failure.
Being average. Especially: being average because I let what's popular push me to write averagely (sic).
To be published, fail miserably, and end up back where I started, but worse. At least on this end there is hope. If publishers won't publish you because they haven't had success selling your work, what is there to dream for?
Strangely enough, my second big fear is to make it huge. I would hate to make celebrity status. Somewhere in the middle would be nice.
At this point I gotta say it is that all those people are correct. Me selling a novel is nothing more than a pipe dream. I wanna prove them wrong but more and more I have trouble convincing myself they are wrong.
Right at this moment, having checked my email and found nothing, it's the fear that none of the book proposals I've got currently with publishers will get accepted (two were being 'presented' at a meeting ten days ago) and that I won't be able to think of anything else, and that the other projects I have in mind I won't be able to write well or complete, or write at all. So I'll have to drop this trying to write full time nonsense and go back to trying to make a living.
That my writing will never be good enough to make a career out of.
Honestly? My family has a history of Alzheimer's. I wake up every morning with hundreds of ideas leaking to the surface and that is exciting and beautiful. But I know it's only a matter of time before I can't remember them anymore. That is my greatest fear.
My greatest fear as a writer is becoming discouraged and quitting. My current manuscript might never get published and my second one might never get published either, but if I let rejections and failures get me down, I will probably give up, and then, I will most certainly never ever realize my dream.
I know that with time and practice I will improve as a writer and maybe even produce something worth publishing, but if I get discouraged or lose my passion, I will most certainly fail.
That I'm good. Conversely, that I'm bad. One carries the burden of expectations, the other the weight of unfulfilled hopes.
Also: insurance salesmen.
Biggest fear is that the call will never happen. I'm working with someone right now, and I'm anxiously awaiting that moment. It would be nice if I could get the call before the holiday's and fend off my well meaning albeit prying relatives with the response 'yes I finally have an agent'. But a part of me thinks, what if the agent just isn't interested, and the call just never happens? It's tuff to think about.
Oh, yes…
You don't get away with asking a question like that, Mr. Bransford, and NOT providing some answer yourself.
You've been unpublished, published, contracted and marketed. At this point in the business, what's YOUR greatest fear?
Boring the living daylights out of your readers, and then boring them to death with the continuous "pimping" of the writer's platform. Guilty as charged.
Feeling like I've wasted my time or I could have done something to get published, but just didn't.
ulysses-
Fair enough. My greatest fear is overcommitting myself and not being able to keep up.
I know we're supposed to write because we love it, but I really hope there is a light at the end of this very dark, long, twisty tunnel. Because really, if I never get published I will stay in the claustrophoic darkness FOR.EV.ER.
Oh crap…anxiety attack.
All of the above .
Going out of print because you haven't understood the first law of being a published writer – publicise your book cos it's all about sales!
I dread the moment, after the book is published, bound and on shelves, when I realize that it would have been so much better if I'd changed just one… more… thing…
(Hello, my name is Josie, and I'm a compulsive editor.)
I'm really private and it takes me a long time to feel comfortable around people. So my biggest fear is the part of success that involves interviews, public appearances, etc. If I could be successful and obscure that would be amazing.
Nathan: Thanks.
I can see where that would be a concern, just judging from your participation here, your contributions elsewhere, your fiction writing, and the demands of a full-time paying gig on top of that. I've frequently been in awe of your ability to maintain your enthusiasm in the face of a workload I don't believe I could handle.
But then, all I know about balance is this: don't try to pick up a three-year old with one hand while holding a plate of spaghetti in the other. It doesn't end well.
Poverty.
I AM NOT AN INTENSE CREATURE!!!!!!! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GIVE YOU THAT IDEA!!!!????
Dying alone, but with lots of great prose at my side.
I agree with Rick Daley. I also fear perceiving my writing is good when it's actually bad, or bad when it's actually good.
Spending your life writing. And never ever getting published. Because you can't write. 🙁
My greatest fear is that no one will read my work. Or that I will die before creating my masterpiece.
John Keats was said to be so upset about his negative reviews that it aggravated his consumption and led to his untimely death.
Of course, he accomplished more in his 25 years than I have. In a few weeks I will be 26 and have yet to write anything particularly brilliant.
How's that for fear? Or maybe I'm just neurotic.
Good or bad. It doesn't matter. My work is my legacy. My biggest fear is not finishing it. And after that, drying up.
That it's all a waste of time, I won't amount to anything, and I should be at the pub with my mates instead.
My biggest fear is that all the effort, has been a colossal waste of time.
I am a published writer so I can at least say that but I would love the validation of a book.
Ms. Trite says:
Best be the dreams that come true, the ones that don't marry someone else.
I've been married thirty years so that dream 'between the covers' is set…I sure would like a couple of hundred pages between the other covers though.
Every single idea I get feels like the last one. Every time I'm writing a book, there's a voice in my head going, "That's it. This is the end. You don't have anything else to say."
So two fears go hand in hand: that I'll run out of ideas, dry up, and never write again, or that I'll keep writing the same thing over and over because I don't have anything else.
My greatest fear is going a day or more without writing even a single sentence.
I'm afraid of both success and failure, but my first fear is that my fear of those will paralyze me and I won't write my book.
My greatest fear is that my dream agent will leave the business before I ever get to query him properly … er, oh – wait a second …
Just kidding. My greatest fear is that I will get so frustrated with the traditional publishing route that I decide to self publish, or go with a small press, and then end up mired in obscurity.
My biggest fear is remaining an aspiring author and never more than that.