Everyone feels anxiety. I comes to each of us differently. Some of us feel scared by circumstances. The fear of the unknown is very common to a lot of people. Change does too. All of this can cause anxiety. When you know change is coming, but you are unsure how it is going to change things or how you are going to be able to enact that change.
How you overcome that anxiety says a lot about your character. Some people can handle it better than others. Some can roll with the situation, while others get chocked up by it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t judge people that have anxiety issues. I have them too. I get anxious about the unknown and change. I have to plan and then plan some more. I talk able the different options that are available. I do research on options that may or may not be possible. It is how I handle my anxiety.
The important thing to do is to recognize that you have a problem and to figure out a way to overcome that problem. Which is a tall order. I understand.
What brought this one?
I am apart of a couple Facebook writing groups and there was one guy on the site that had a friend that was holding an idea of hers to her chest and wouldn’t tell many people about it from fear that it will be stolen.
I understand that mentality. I was there at one point in my writing life. At the time I was suffering bad from anxiety and fear. I felt self-conscious that my writing was no good and if someone were to read my work that they would ridicule me and tell me that my writing was no good. I though that if they heard my idea that they would take it , use it, there work would be better than mine and then they would get all the glory for such a wonderful idea that I had come up with.
There is a couple problems with that concept.
First. Ideas aren’t copy-writable. Anyone can write an novel with any idea out there and it is fine. It is the execution that is copy-writable.
Second. In order to get your work better, the work needs to get read by someone that you don’t know. Someone that will be honest and tell you more than it is good. You need to suck it up, and hear the things that you may not want to hear about your project. Sometimes the truth hurts.
Third. By reaching to fear in this defensive way, you are letting the anxiety control you. Anxiety is not the boss. You are.Fear needs to be confronted and overcome. Libraries worth of books are written on this subject.
Four. Beginning writers always suck. Period. Writing is hard. Drawing is hard. Graphic design is hard. Any creative pursuits worth going after is hard. It takes hours and hours of work to be able to get your art to an advanced level. Refer to my blog post about my full opinion on the word talent. Here is a link. https://napedde.wordpress.com/2017/03/10/ranblings-anxieties-readers-and-talent/
Five. Nothing is original. All stories, movies, art has been done before and will be done may times after you are done. It is a fact of the creative life. You can’t get away from it. Avatar is from Pocahontas and the story of Moses. Star wars is a heroes journey. Like Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit was a take on the Authurian legend.
Six. If you disagree with me about the no ideas point. Look at this. We are being surrounded and pummeled to death with media. Youtube, radio, tv, movies. Everything that we get bombarded by can potentially inspire us. You read the news about a heist. Two years later you are writing a novel about one, that has been inspired by it. For those that are creatively minded, these ideas sink into our psyche to resonate until we can use them. They are there underneath the surface. Waiting to strike. They are not original. Sometimes the ideas that you get are cliche and bad. But that is a story for next time.
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