Butt-In-Chair: A No-Excuses Guide For Writers Who Struggle To Get Started Read online

  So what causes procrastinators to fear failing?

  “Often, this phobia is linked with early life causes, like demeaning parents or siblings, or traumatic events where a major embarrassment was the result of some minor failure,” according to the article, Fear of Failure, on way2hope.org.

  Fear of failure can build up over a lifetime, getting progressively more paralyzing as the years go on–unless you do something about it.

  Do You Fear Failure?

  Although fear of failure may come from not having the skills or knowledge to do something, most of the time the fear is in your mind (remember: False Expectations Appearing Real).

  Here are some common signs that you fear failure:

  * You avoid doing something if you know you won’t be able to do it well immediately.

  * You don’t set goals; if you don’t set goals, you can’t fail.

  * You procrastinate on the things you really want to do because you don’t believe you can do it.

  * You live well below your potential (and know it).

  * You never step outside your comfort zone.

  * Your life is mediocre; it could be better, but why fix something that’s not broken?

  * You only attempt things you know you’ll be good at.

  * You sabotage yourself by procrastinating.

  * Any time you want to attempt something new, you first play the scenario out in your mind. If you see your attempt ending in failure, criticism or ridicule, you don’t attempt it.

  * You give up on things easily.

  * You worry about being judged for not being able to do something well/perfect.

  For more information on the causes of fear of failure, read:

  * How Fear of Failure Destroys Success, by Adrian Savage

  * Is Fear Causing You to Live Below Your True Potential?

  The idea of failing can be scary, there’s no doubt. But isn’t the idea of never reaching your writing dreams scarier?

  Action Steps:

  Accept Your Fear–This is the most important thing you can do for yourself. Failure in life is inevitable. It’s not possible for you to be amazing at something immediately. It’s not possible for you to achieve everything you want to achieve immediately. It takes time. It takes work. Once you can finally accept that failure is just a part of life, you’ll be able to turn your failure into amazing writing opportunities.

  Act–Since fear of failure immobilizes you, in order to overcome it, you need to take action. Go after your dreams; finally sit down and write that short story; finally submit your poem to a literary magazine; do something! Action gives you the ability to change the circumstances that hold you back.

  Keep At It–Ask any successful person and they’ll tell you they didn’t succeed after their first attempt. Hell, they might not have succeeded after their hundredth attempt! The point is, if you give up, failure is inevitable. But if you keep on trying, you’ll eventually get there. Whenever you feel yourself letting your fear of failure get the best of you, just ask yourself, “What would I attempt if I knew I couldn’t fail?”

  Treat Every Failure as a Learning Opportunity–Being successful in writing is all about learning what doesn’t work for you. Once you know what doesn’t work (from having failed a couple times), you can improve on the circumstance and eventually find what does work.

  Keep Believing–This is one of the most important things you can do for your writing career: Believe in yourself! Know that you can do this. Know that you will do this. Know that there’s no one better for the job than you. And no matter what, don’t let rejection kill your confidence.

  Sit Down and Write!

  Document Your Failures—You’ve failed before in life. We all have. Now’s the time to make a list in your journal of all the times you’ve failed. Include anything you can think of; nothing is too small to include.

  Review Your Failures—Go back and look at your list of failures. Take a look at the times you’ve failed. Now consider this: You’ve failed plenty of times before and yet you lived and made it through to the other side. You’ve grown and are a better, stronger person for it. Write about how you’re feeling.

  Do You Fear Rejection?

  A fear of rejection is an outcome of low self esteem and/or lack of confidence in yourself and your writing. A fear of rejection makes you feel like everyone in the world is a better writer than you are.

  So where does fear of rejection come from?

  Here’s one possibility:

  “As a child this fear may have developed within you when your parents constantly compared you with others with the intention that this might drive you to do best in life,” according to the article, Do You Suffer From Fear of Rejection? “How hard you worked couldn’t satisfy others and thus you developed the feeling that you can never be better than this.”

  Another possibility is having experienced a large amount of rejections or a very hurtful rejection in your past and you’re still holding on to the negative feelings related to being rejected. And the rejection doesn’t have to be related to your writing—it could include any kind of rejection from not getting picked in gym class to having the girl of your dreams turn your down for a date.

  Many writers suffer from fear of rejection. They believe no one will ever accept their work and they will be rejected by everyone in the writing world–publishers, editors, other authors and, especially, readers.

  Here are some signs you fear rejection:

  * You never assert yourself or stand up for yourself

  * You lack the courage to send your writing out into the world

  * You lack the courage to allow anyone to read your writing

  * You never speak up when you have ideas, suggestions, advice, etc

  * You don’t believe in yourself or your writing

  * You don’t take any (or you take very few) risks

  * You think every writer in the world is a better writer than you are

  * You never even attempt to go after your dreams

  If you see these signs in yourself, you may have a fear of rejection. For more information, or to see other examples of what fear of rejection looks like, read:

  Handling Fear of Rejection

  Overcoming Your Fear of Rejection

  Being rejected can be a scary thing. Rejection affirms that there is someone out there who doesn’t like your writing.

  What you have to remember, though, is that when your writing is rejected, the only thing being rejected is your writing.

  So many times writers see rejection as a rejection of themselves, and that’s when they lose the courage to submit their work or, in some cases, to continue writing.

  What you need to understand is a rejection of your writing is NOT a rejection of you. It is ONLY a rejection of your writing.

  There is no rejection, only selection.

  And just because your writing was rejected, that doesn’t mean you’re not a good writer. All writers get rejected at some point in their careers. It’s the writers who learn to use rejection as fuel to become a better writer and keep putting themselves out there that eventually succeed.

  Stephen King is a great example of this. In his book, On Writing, he talks about how he used to collect all his rejection letters and pin them to the ceiling in his bedroom.

  If you make it your business to see rejection as an opportunity to better yourself and keep on trying, it’s a lot less frightening.

  It’s better to have a ton of rejection letters and know that you’re actually attempting your writing dreams than it is to have none because you were never brave enough to try.

  Plus, rejection is feedback. Rejection says, “This wasn’t the right publisher for you” or “There’s a better home for your writing.” And it always says there’s room for improvement, which is pretty good feedback.

  Action Steps:

  Accept that rejection is part of being a writer–Once you can accept this thought, you will be able to overcome your fear of being rejected
. Just keep in mind that all the greats were rejected at one point or another, too.

  Collect rejections–As I mentioned above, Stephen King hung his rejection letters from his bedroom ceiling and kept on submitting his writing. If you accept that rejection is just part of being a writer, you can then play the rejection game. What that means is, collect rejections. Instead of getting a rejection letter and thinking, “Ugh, not another rejection letter…” think “Yes! Another rejection letter!”

  Keep all your rejection letters together–Or if you’re brave enough, post them all somewhere you can see them. Then anytime you look at them, see them as proof that you’re brave, courageous and a risk taker. See them as a reminder that you are going after your dreams and that you are putting yourself out there in a big way.

  Have someone say “no” to you over and over again–I know this sounds silly, but I once did a program where I learned how to get over rejection. We did this exercise where we turned to the person next to us and rejected them over and over and over again until we were all totally bored and had moved past our fear of being rejected. Once you’ve been rejected 100 times, it doesn’t feel so bad when you get rejected 101 times.

  Keep sending your writing out; keep showing your writing to others–The last thing you want to do is let your fear of rejection get the best of you. So keep writing, keep submitting your writing, keep showing your writing to people. The more you do it, the better you’ll get at it.

  Sit Down and Write!

  Write About Being Rejected—Unless you live in a vacuum, you’ve been rejected before in your life. So write about it. When were you rejected? What happened? How did it make you feel? Why do you think it happened? What did you tell yourself it meant?

  What’s The Worst That Could Happen?—Write about what could potentially happen if you get rejected. What would change? What would you think about yourself? What would others think?

  Do You Fear Not Being Good Enough/Perfect?

  Does the thought of not being good enough make you want to puke? Does it cause you to freak out and worry constantly?

  Well then, fellow writer, you are experiencing a very common fear of procrastinators: the fear of not being good enough.

  So what exactly is a fear of not being good enough?

  “This fear is one of comparison, competition,” according to the blog post, Basic Fear #2: Not Being Good Enough. ”We tend to judge ourselves against another standard. This standard is often a comparison between what we ‘know’ about ourselves and what we ‘believe’ about the other. In other words, we end up comparing all the negative stuff we think true about ourselves to the positive image others portray to us (and we portray to them). We end up seeing ‘the yuck’ of our own lives, but fail to see it in the other.”

  Here are some common signs that the fear of not being good enough is present:

  * You always compare yourself to others

  * You think everyone is better at XYZ than you are

  * You are judgmental of everyone around you because of your own insecurities

  * You lack self esteem

  * You doubt your writing abilities

  * You always try to be perfect–in every situation and circumstance

  * You berate yourself for not being perfect

  * You’re a perfectionist

  If you recognize yourself in the list above, you may have a fear of not being good enough.

  Although the fear of not being good enough manifests in hundreds of ways–avoiding writing, never submitting your writing, etc. – deep down, the fear of not being good enough comes from one thing: lack of confidence.

  When you lack confidence, you always feel like no matter what you do, it will never compare to what other people can do; you always feel like you won’t be successful because you don’t have the ability to be.

  But when you believe in yourself–and believe in your writing–the world is your oyster (as they say). You can do anything. You can be anything. You can achieve anything. There is nothing outside your reach.

  Action Steps

  Believe in yourself—If you are ever going to become confident and make your fear of not being good enough disappear, you have to believe in yourself. You are your own worst enemy, which also means you can become your own best friend. It’s all a matter of how you think.

  Know that you are good enough—Confidence starts with knowing what you’re good at and using it to your advantage.

  Use your fear as fuel—The only way to get better at something is to do it repeatedly. So instead of allowing your fear of not being good enough to hold you back, use it as fuel to grow and become a stronger writer. The more you know about something, the more confident you become. So by using your fear as fuel to learn more about writing or to attempt writing more often will make you more confident overall.

  Ask for help—There’s no shame in asking for help. If you’re not 100 percent confident in your writing ability, ask someone to help you out by reading and critiquing one of your stories or join a creative writing class and sharpen your writing skills.

  Accept that you don’t need to know everything to write—This is definitely a thought that most writers toy with at least once in their careers: Do I know enough to write this book/article/whitepaper/etc? I think Bill O’Hanlon, author of Write is a Verb, hit the nail on the head when he mentioned in an interview I did with him that he wouldn’t have written a single book if he had to know everything about the subject before he started writing. Writing is a journey. You’ll never know everything immediately, and the best way to learn is by doing.

  Give up trying to be perfect—You are not perfect. I am not perfect. James Joyce was not perfect. Stephen King is not perfect. Your favorite authors are not perfect. Are you starting to see a pattern? Perfection is an idea, but not a reality. It is impossible to be perfect. Imperfection is what makes us human. So rather than trying to be perfect all the time, revel in being able to just be who you are. When you take on that mind-set and let go of your need to be perfect, something amazing happens. You fall in love with who you are and what makes you unique and different—flaws and all. (It’s also important to note that perfection is boring. No one wants to read about a perfect character with a perfect life and perfect job and perfect family…ugh! It’s so boring! The same goes for real life.)

  Stop beating yourself up—You are a good writer. You are learning as you go. You are becoming better every single day. So stop beating yourself up! As Epictetus said, “Nothing great is created suddenly.”

  Sit Down and Write!

  All Good Things About You—Make a list of all the things you’re good at, whether that be writing, playing video games or grilling a mean steak. When you reflect on the things that you are already good at, it helps get you in a more positive state-of-mind, which can then help boost your confidence enough to try something new (like writing).

  Reflect On The Good Times—Write in your journal about a time when you did something well and were successful. Write about what happened, how it happened, when it happened and how it felt.

  *Bonus Sit Down and Write! An Exercise for Letting Go of Fears As They Pop Up

  As you begin to work through your fears, you’ll find more and more surfacing. This is a good thing. Let your fears surface. Soak in your fears until your fingers are prune-y.

  Then as you begin your writing journey, whenever fears pop up, you’ll be able to let them go quicker. Here’s how:

  1. Write about your fears—In your journal, write out all of your fears. List them out, get them down on paper. Whatever you’re feeling at the moment, write it out.

  2. Change your state—Get up, move around, stretch, say your writing affirmation to yourself 10 times, put on some music, go for a walk, etc. By changing your state, you’re changing your state-of-mind.

  3. Find a way to reason with your fears—Ask yourself the question: What’s the worst that could happen?” Your response will help you see there’s nothing to be afraid of.


  Remember, your fears only have power over you if you let them. [Note: I learned this exercise in letting go of fears from Rob Notter, a successful business and health coach.]

  Now that you’ve worked through your fears and have started to come to terms with them, it’s time to talk about the real reason why you’re not writing.

  Yes, it has to do with your fears. It has to do with the excuses you make.

  But the basis for all of that are your priorities. And as of right now, writing is not a priority for you.

  Your Priorities Are Your Actions—Not What You Say Or Write Down

  Zen Habits blogger, Leo Babauta, wrote an article for Success magazine about setting priorities.

  Babauta’s article discussed the three mistakes to avoid when setting your priorities. The three big mistakes he said people commonly make are:

  They Don’t Think About It–”People often do their work and live their lives without consciously setting priorities,” Babauta says. ”They’re showing their priorities through their actions, but they’re not consciously set. As a result, they end up living lives and doing work they don’t really want. They fall into a life they don’t want rather than designing the life they want.”

  They Make It Too Complicated–”Some people do set priorities, but they do so with complicated systems of numbers and letters,” he says. “‘A12 is given to top priorities, then ‘A22 to the next level, down to ‘B12 and ‘C22 and so forth. The truth is, you can only really have a couple of real priorities at a time. If you think you have many priorities, you aren’t being realistic — you will end up putting a couple of those ‘priorities’ on the backburner — which means they weren’t priorities in the first place.”