Mwah-hah-hah: Fear

Hallowe’en is (at least partially) about Fear, right? Good-natured fear. You know the toddler in the Dracula getup isn’t going to puncture anything more serious than the wrapped candy you distribute.

The fear that hits writers sometimes is like that, too. It’s not gonna kill you, so as the cliché has it that must mean it’ll make you stronger. But it’s so, so hard to remember that. To remember that all you need to do is keep putting one word in front of another. You may not be able to outrun your fear, but you can write yourself a path through it.

So I asked my writers this week to write about their fear. We looked at the conversation Elizabeth Gilbert shared in her essential book Big Magic; I  couldn’t wait to see what this creative group came up with.

Gilbert sets boundaries with her fear: you can do this, but not that. I am in charge. One of my writers took a similar approach, but added a trio of enforcers named after personal growth qualities we all need. At the end of her piece, the enforcers escorted Fear outside “to have a talk.” Tony Soprano would have been proud.

Another writer could have been writing a movie script called Fear Takes a Holiday. Instead of calling in the goons to beat up Fear, she showed Fear what a good time looks like. Encouraged it to take a load off and hang out in the sunshine. You could almost see the piña colada in Fear’s hand, see the smile slowly dawning on Fear’s face.

Smiling Fear? Well, that’s no real fear at all. So whatever you fear, hand it an umbrella drink and show it a grand old time. It’ll never want to go home again.

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