The Case for Scary

I'm not big on horror movies and haunted houses. 

In fact, last year I almost didn't take my twelve-year-old to the Halloween store to get the make-up she needed for her Ziggy Stardust costume because I thought the décor might be too scary.

But I'm writing today to make the case for doing scary things.

Choosing to be the kind of person who writes books and builds an audience for them is pretty damn terrifying, when you think about it. Which you probably have. Excessively.

Some writers fear finding out they don't have anything important to say.

Some writers fear being ignored.

Some fear rejection.

But when you really dig down to the root of the fear, it's not actually any of those things. It's how you think those experiences will make you FEEL that scares you.

You're scared of feelings. We all are.

And when you put it like that, doesn't it sound a bit, well, silly?

What if we accepted that negative feelings are part of being an author?

On a logical level, we KNOW this is part of the deal.

But we still fight like hell to avoid scary feelings. And that's when we get locked up.

That's when our brain starts refusing to let us get words on the page, or finally get serious about building our mailing list.

There's a long list of feelings we'd rather avoid, thank you very much, and refill this glass of pinot, please.

Meanwhile, we ignore the fact that negative feelings are simply part of the human experience.

Anything we do to try and escape that reality just causes more suffering.

I bet at some point you've stopped writing altogether to avoid negative feelings. I also bet that those nasty feelings just popped up somewhere else in your life, didn't they? And, you had the additional fear that you'd die without ever having dared to do what you were meant to do.

What could you accomplish if you decided to just let the negative feelings be there and not fight so hard to avoid them?

If you've got at least one book under your belt, you probably know all of this already.

But, the really tricky thing about being a writer (and a human) is that even when we get all this figured out, fear sneaks back in and we respond with inaction before we even think about it.

We find that we haven't done any marketing in months or that we're doing anything about writing that book that we can't stop thinking about.

We've got to do our mindset work so we can remember that doing scary work is worth it.

Courage feels terrible while you're exercising it, but pride takes over once you've done it.

This minute, you can recommit. Dust off that drawer novel. Reach out to that influencer.

Whatever it is you're scared of—that's the project that will help you grow the fastest.

Start now.

And, of course, it's easier to tackle scary things when you know someone has your back.

Anne, Rachelle and I are here to take some of the fright out of writing a book and getting it out into the world.

Think of us as holding your hand through the haunted house.

If you need some help finishing your book, a great starting place is the Happily Ever Author Club.

And if you really want to get a handle on your mindset, subscribe to our newsletter and get a free mini-course on author mindset.

Happy Halloween!

—Sue