By Corbin Lewars

I, like many other adolescent girls, had a fascination with all things equine. I was fortunate to have a best friend who owned a horse and had access to a stable of horses. One day, this friend and I were living our dream of galloping free along endless trails. The dream turned to a nightmare when my horse spooked, tried to buck me off, and instead dragged me for several hundred feet along rocky terrain. My foot finally freed from the stirrup, releasing me to the ground. Although I was scared, shaken, and possibly only semi-conscious, I knew I had to get right back on that horse otherwise I would fear horses forever.

Thirty years later, therapists and scientists have proven what I intuited as a girl—the best way to overcome fear is to do what we fear. The principle of “exposure therapy” is to have patients face their fear in a gradual and easy way in hopes of reducing the negative impact it has on their life. As the brain fills with neutral, or ideally positive experiences, the traumatic experience becomes diluted. By remembering all of my joyful, non-concussion inducing riding experiences, I was able to overcome my resistance to getting back on to my bucking bronco. The idea isn’t to attempt to forget the experience or rid ourselves of our fears entirely because some fear keeps us safe, but rather to learn how to stop being paralyzed by our fears.

Almost every writer I work with is afraid. And their fears vary from the ubiquitous fear of criticism, to fear of being emotionally vulnerable, to the tricky, elusive fear of success, not failure. All of these fears, and more, are valid and I would dare to say being an artist is the riskiest career path anyone can choose. It’s not physically dangerous (as far as I know no one has ended up in the ER after writing), but it’s emotionally terrifying, and our brain sometimes gets these two things confused. You probably won’t die from writing, but you feel as if you will. Even when you understand this and tell your racing heart and sweaty palms that it’s just words and you’re safe, your body shouts back, “I’m falling off a cliff, help!”

Needless to say, this can cause writers block. The only way to overcome the block/fear is to replace our skydiving without a parachute experiences with some nice picnic in the park experiences. If your palpating heart is due to some harsh criticism you received on a piece, replace that memory with praise. Send an essay or poem to a publication you are familiar with and respected by. If this “publication” is your grandmother, so be it, we all need praise. Search through your emails and facebook page to find every nice thing anyone ever said about your writing (and you for that matter) and paste all of these words into a document. Read this document every day if you can, ideally before writing. Read it several times and tape it on to your computer on days that you’re blocked by fear.

If your fear is based on what others will think when you expose them for the lying, stealing, abusive, or maybe just nasty when they aren’t winning an argument person that they are, tell yourself they will never read your story. This may not be true, but it is always an option, so believe it with all of your heart. Our writing does not need to destroy relationships or humiliate others, but it must be our emotional truth. Trying to hide this emotional truth leads to dull writing, so never deny your truth. But over time, and many drafts later, the truth can often be revealed in a way that is safe for everyone. Trust that this will happen after you say every thing you need to say uncensored.

If you’re working on a piece for the NY Times, The Sun, or Random House you are probably afraid of two things: getting accepted and getting rejected. Those are valid fears, seeing as one of these two things will most certainly happen, but either outcome is good. If you are rejected, you will become a member of the million member strong group of other talented, witty writers who have been rejected by these organizations. Relish the camaraderie and know you’re amongst the finest and the bravest. If you are accepted, thousands, maybe even millions, of people will read your work and maybe, just maybe, one or two of them will not adore every word you wrote. Sure criticism is hard, but it’s even harder when we fixate on it. Don’t read your bad reviews and comments, read your good ones.

And remember, you accomplished the goal of staring your fear in the face and not cowering. OK, maybe you cowered a little bit, but you kept writing, and that’s what matters. You overcame your fear and you wrote. Even better, you submitted that work which takes courage. Being a writer is scary, I will never try to tell you otherwise. I won’t even try to tell you to rid yourself of your fears, because they are part of the package. But I will tell you to write anyway, even when you’re trembling. As Cheryl Strayed said in her “Dear Sugar” column, “You want me to give you permission to write your truth with honesty and heart because doing so scares the living crap out of you. I’m here not only to give you permission, but also to say that you must. There is no other way.

Corbin Lewars (www.corbinlewars.com) mentors other writers in her office in Ballard and virtually. She is the author of Creating a Life: The memoir of a writer and mom in the making, which was nominated for the 2011 PNBA and Washington State book awards and Divorce as Opportunity (Summer, 2013). Her essays have been featured in over twenty-five publications including Mothering, Hip Mama and several anthologies and she teaches writing at The Richard Hugo House and at national conferences. She lives in Ballard with her two children.

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