Fear

josephlwiess (54) in fiction • 7 years ago

Fear has duality. It can be the reason why you run and hide. It can be the reason you stay and fight.
Fear is a powerful motivator
Fear is an emotion.
Fear is just fear.

Twenty years ago, I sat down and wrote a novel, sent it to an agent, and then let it accumulate dust in the desk drawer.
Why, you ask, would you do this?
Fear....pure and simple, fear. I was afraid that it wasn't good enough, that people wouldn't read it, and I didn't know if I could handle that kind of rejection.

So, you my fellow steemians, will be the recipients of my irrational fear.
Starting tomorrow, I will start posting the unpublished story and you get to read it.
It's time to stop being afraid.

Oh, and when I'm through posting this story, I'll start posting my more recent works, and hopefully you'll be able to see how I've improved in the last 20 years.

fiction writing poetry philosophy

7 years ago by josephlwiess (54)

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citizenzero (56) · 7 years ago

Good for you @ josephlwiess. I know exactly how you feel. There's the fear of failure but there's also the fear of success, a fear that now you'll have to perform at a higher level. There's also the fear of rejection where you expose yourself to the world only to have them laugh at you or pity you for your delusions. But screw all that. The more you face those fears, or more appropriately, deny them their power, the easier things get. Fear is just an hallucination. It has no substance that can hurt you in any real way. There is lots of published material that is total dreck. I'm sure you writing is better than a lot of it. Maybe you aren't a Steinbeck (submitted his first novel over 200 times before it was publised) or Stephen King (submitted Carrie almost as many times before it was published), but if you have something to say or a world to create put it out here. It's better than having some relative find it and publish it after you've died like what happened to Herman Melville, of Moby Dick fame who died penniless because it was his third novel and his other two had bombed so no publisher would touch it. Ted Kazinski, the Unibomber, had to kill people to get his manifesto published. If he'd had Steemit, he'd be a free man today. So fear is not a valid excuse. Steem on!

Upvoted and Resteemed. (to all of my 32 loyal minnow followers) Heh, heh, heh.

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jkiw (60) · 7 years ago

well, one of your loyal minnow followers followed you here - and loved the "total dreck" line... how much more German can you get :-) and upvoted, resteemed and now following @josephlwiess hoping to be one of the first in line to read his book ;-) Cheers from Germany