What books freed you from your fear of writing?

Fifty Shades of Gray. On the surface that seems like the petty answer, and I did have the initial petty response to that book, but it led to a much deeper level of thinking about writing and storytelling for me. The thing is, I loved those books. I hated every piece that comprised them, but loved the whole. I hated the bad writing technique. I hated the stereotypical characters and gender roles. I hated the cliches. I hated the dialogue. But I inhaled those books and read each of them at least twice.

First revelation: Writing technique does not equal great storytelling. An interesting, engaging story can get more mileage than technical perfection.
Second revelation: People just want a great story. It doesn't have to have a moral. It doesn't have to try to change the world. Story is enough.
Third revelation: The world doesn't end when people know the dark, sexy, dirty, mean, or stupid thoughts you have as a writer. People will know those ideas and themes came our of your head, but it's okay.

Those three things hit on my biggest fears as a writer: 1. that my technique wasn't good enough, 2. that I was supposed to aspire to write something meaningful, and 3. people will know the kinds of thoughts I think and they'll judge me or hate me.

Those aren't necessarily universal fears, but those were my fears, and they were limiting me as a writer. They were preventing me from writing the truth of my characters and scenarios. When I loved the Fifty Shades of Gray books, and I didn't judge or hate EL James for having written them, it was very freeing for me as a writer.

Layla Nahar said:

I have this. I'll say that it's a kind of performance anxiety/fear of being judged.

Click to expand...

Yes, and even the act of writing itself, regardless of whom you think will or won't ever read it, can fall victim to performance anxiety.

I have suffered this. It's real and it made writing almost impossible for a time. I desperately wanted to write and yet began to dread it overwhelmingly because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to write ("perform"). A form of writer's impotence, I guess. Terrible while it lasted.

No book, no advice, no set of instructions has, or ever will, free me from my fear of writing. Every time I sit down to my WIP I have to fight off the sudden urge to do something else, play a game, check my email, or go for a walk. Then I turn down the volume of the mocking voice in my head, take some deep breaths, and pacify my anxiety by fiddling with the paragraphs preceding the place I left off. At last I find myself at the blank part of the page. By then I usually know what the next word should be.

Stephen King. First, because some of his books are about absolute schlock, but they captivate me anyway because he takes me inside the heads of his characters and they're observations on the ironies, oddities and idiosyncrasies of life. They can even get rambly about it, but then that's how real thoughts are. It's as though he just starts writing stream of consciousness (which he doesn't, of course, but because it seems that way it makes me think I can do it too). Second, because his book, "On Writing", reinforced the idea that you just start, and you just do it your way.

So I did. And I even decided to start with my own ramped up version of, "It was a dark and stormy night." And away I went.

Fanfiction.

I'm not here to drag it down or anything. I love fanfic. Every time I finish a big project, or it's Christmas or whatever, I round up the big fics that I missed in my old fandoms and settle down for a fun id-fic reading session.

That said, as someone who's been addicted to the written word since she learned how to read, I've always been a reader only, a primo worshiper of books, never a writer of fiction, all the way to grad school. (I envy those people who say, "wrote my first story at 7" yadda yadda.)

Then, at the ripe ol' age of 29, after reading a shit-ton of pretty fun (some hilarious and brilliant, some not so great) fanfic, it dawned on me that it was a STORY. With CHARACTERS. Who RESPONDED TO STUFF.

And the author wasn't god, just some person I was goofing around with in the comments. So yeah, fanfic exposed the seams of fiction, revealed the workings and such, and opened my eyes to how I could do it too, no big deal. Not being scared about not being good was, I think, a great boost of confidence.

Of course it took YEARS to get out of bad fanfic habits and create my own characters, not to mention weaning myself off fic and fandom, but hey, I'll always love fic for letting me write.

Maybe not fear, but worries that my style is not good enough to be successful. I found this book while browsing on my Kindle Fire, downloaded it, and read it. I was like, "I'm almost as good as she is!" I know with more experience I can be at her level. There is definitely hope for me .