Cause of Death: FEAR

IT’S A DIFFERENT SORT OF DEATH for a storyteller who doesn’t tell their story.

We aren’t all born with the ability to mold words into the exact image of our thoughts. Not all of us are graced with the time to sit down and really put work into the craft of writing. BUT all writers will feel the call to tell a story. It’s an itch at your fingertips. It’s the never ending play of events in your head. It’s the voices of your characters saying “bring me to life.”

Yet so many of us will never tell that story.  Some of us will get as far as writing it down, and then tuck it away, never again to see the light of day. The fear of letting anyone else into our world, letting someone else meet characters that we breathed life into, is real.

What do we do? Do all writers feel this fear? I’m pretty sure the majority do. There will always be the few that don’t, I suppose. But so far, every writer I have spoken to has a fear of releasing their work into the great unknown. Some don’t even let trusted friends read their work, much less a publisher.

How do we push past the fear so that we can tell our stories? 

I am a mother of two.  My oldest is now in high school and preparing to leave the nest, and attend college far from home.  I AM TERRIFIED. So. Is. She. She has big dreams of becoming a business owner and an artist, and she looks to me as an example. Why? I don’t know. Must be genetically encoded.

Both of my children have heard me rant about the stories in my head and how much I love them, and they have both said—numerous times—I need to publish them. Fear kept me from doing so.

I feared financial hardships.
I feared losing my privacy.
I feared the ridicule.
Most of all, I feared letting my guard down and allowing God only knows how many people to take a peek into my soul.

That’s what writing and story-telling is, after all. It’s an unleashing of the soul.

As my kiddos kept looking to me for inspiration to follow their own dreams, I made the choice to take a leap of faith of my own. Taking pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard), I finished my book and looked for ways to publish it. There were many conversations with my friends that included rolling nausea and shaky hands. If you have ever looked into publishing, you know that there are a million ways to go about it. The cost to publish, market, and edit vary across the board. So many people read the manuscript and give you their thoughts. Yea, my heart crumbled a little with every one of those thoughts. But I kept going on. The journey morphed into not only setting an example, but proving a point: that even when things seem their hardest, it is never impossible to finish the task. I had to keep whispering (sometimes near yelling), “One more step. Just take one more step and see what happens.”

Being a single parent, self publishing was a difficult idea to come to grips with. I have too much on my plate as it is to plan and coordinate. I needed guidance. Traditional publishing was way too expensive. Then there were vanity publishers. I won’t try to explain that here. Needless to say my head was in a constant state of spinning. The plethora of links lead to an overwhelming amount of emails to get through.

Still, one step at a time.

One more email.

One more site.

Eventually, I found Spellbound. They are still a brand new publishing company, but it felt like it was created just for me. If I had stopped looking just a few months earlier, I would have missed out.  This is an amazing team to be a part of and signing with them was such an easy decision. Every step since is still scary, but it’s so worth it. It’s worth it because my story deserves its day in the sun. It’s worth it if it inspires just one or two people.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

You may be asking yourself, “Did she just quote the bible?”

Yes, yes I did.

This is important, whether you’re a believer or not. The key word is “walk”. Focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Everything around you is going to happen regardless, but if you just manage to keep walking, you’ll be alright. You don’t have to walk at anyone else’s pace but your own. You just have to keep taking one step after another. This is true about anything, not just writing.

The world needs stories. Therefore, the world needs storytellers. While your fear is valid, it is not, in the slightest bit, uncommon.

If that quote doesn’t do it for you, then consider this one: “Just do it.”

I’ve recently purchased a book at my local bookshop, Literarity, and it is not only written by an anonymous writer, but the book is untitled. Sorry, you’ll have to visit my Instagram account to see the book if you want to look it up. Anyway, I think it is the bravest and most genius work ever. This is just another example of taking it one step at a time. He or she wrote the book and got it out there. Maybe one day we will discover who or why. For now, the world has not been robbed of this remarkable tale.

Courage is not one epic event. Courage is a trail of small steps that lead to an amazing adventure. Take heart my fellow creators and story-tellers and remember, you just have to face your fears one step at a time. Tell your story. For people like us, to write, is to live. 

Sincerely,
Em Fyre