“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” –Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Dune

This iconic quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune gained popularity beyond sci-fi fans during COVID when someone, most likely a Dune fan, posted that reciting that litany was the perfect length for a thorough wash of your hands. I’ve always been fascinated by this quote, especially the last two lines. The occasions where I’ve needed the litany have been rare, thankfully, but to many people, it’s almost, no, is a mantra to get you through any situation.

If you’re a writer, what do you fear?

Writing and fear come together on two different levels.

Fear in Genre Writing

The most obvious one is if you write horror or psychological thrillers or anything of that ilk, you have to make people afraid. That’s the whole point. You want the reader to be scared witless. For me, the scene in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot was one where the protagonist sees a child vampire floating in the darkness outside his second floor window. To this day, if I’m in a house or hotel and above the first floor, I draw the curtains closed well before dark.

That scene, then, fulfilled its purpose. It advanced the plot and scared me s**tless.

In my writing, I use this kind of fear on a less visceral level. There’s always an element of fear in espionage fiction: Will the bad guy succeed with his nefarious plan for world domination and/or destruction; will the good guys come out of their mission unscathed; etc. Fear in that kind of writing amps up action sequences. All of this, of course, is “fictional” fear. It’s not real, but a writer can make it feel real enough that you won’t look out a window at night.

You might even say in this case, fear is a positive for a writer in a genre that invokes fear.

Failure, Judgement, Success

There are a number of fears associated with writing or being a writer, and that’s with the process of writing itself.

Will I/my book fail?

Will readers judge me for what I write or how I write?

How will I handle it if I succeed?

Yes, fear of success is real. For example, your first book is a raging success. Top of every best-seller list. Wins literary prizes. You rake in a ton of royalties. Then, you start thinking about whether you can maintain that success. You start asking yourself the wrong kind of “what if” questions.

What if I can’t finish the next book?

What if the next book doesn’t do as well as the first?

What if my fan base goes away?

You get the picture, and this kind of fear for a writer can be debilitating and the biggest cause of writer’s block, IMHO.

I can say that every time I cross the Rubicon of publishing a book, my immediate thought is, what if people hate it, followed by how will readers judge me for what I’ve written about. For me, this is mainly because history and politics play big roles in my stories, and both my historical and political biases are evident.

Judging can induce fear in a writer another way. Some literary fiction writers turn their noses up at genre fiction, and even genre writers have recently looked down on people who write smut. Smut is popular among a certain demographic of readers, and writers in that genre know what appeals to them. So a genre writer, or smut writer, may fear being judged as less literary or as not a “real” writer. (I’ll just remind you that a horror writer won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Didn’t stop the judging, though.)

I’m guilty of judging writers for creating books with Artificial Intelligence. Again, some of us have taken that a bit too far. We judge the use of ellipses, the Oxford Comma, and correct grammar as signs that you’ve created your work with AI. I know this may torque a few people, but to me, AI is a cheat. If ChatGPT or Claude or whoever writes your full-length book based on a brief plot summary from you, you’re not doing the writing. Writing is not easy, and some of us who sweat blood in the creation of something we put our names on find it easy, too easy, to judge.

Use AI if you want, but identify it as such.

The other fear, failure, crosses all genres and sub-genres and even affects nonfiction writers. That haunting realization when you see 0 sales for a day, a week, a month, a year. That one or two star rating without understanding why, especially when a majority of your ratings are four- and five-star. That scathing review that makes you question whether you should ever write another word. Fear of failure pervades all professions, but for creatives it can be harrowing. It has even shut some highly creative people down.

Coping Mechanisms

I’m no therapist, but I know what got me through each of those fears.

Success: When my debut novel won an award, I used the happy validation it provided to write the next book and the next, etc. When that same novel was on an Amazon best-seller list twice, I used it as encouragement to write more.

Judgement: Granted, this is one not fully conquered yet. A lot of my antagonists are based on real people, but I’ve exaggerated their “badness” to where some are over the top, though believable. Every time I write a scene like that, I think, “What will people think of this? Will it put readers off?” To answer those questions, I use my critique partners and my beta readers, as well as my editor. If the scene advances the plot or explains why the bad guy is bad, let people judge. I know I’ve told the story the way I want to tell it.

Failure: It would be almost disingenuous to say that I don’t think anything I’ve written is a failure, so I don’t fear it. But I do fear failing, a failure I can’t even define at times. Oh, I’ve had agents and publishers reject novels. I’ve had literary journals reject stories. I’ve entered work in contests and didn’t get so much as an honorable mention. The key is to learn from failure and accept that perhaps there was really nothing wrong with your writing in the first place. Agents, publishers, editors, and contest judges can’t be anything but subjective. And I remember how it feels when I get a message or an email from a reader to the tune of, “It’s your fault I’m late for work today. I had to stay up all night to finish your book because it was that good.”

The actor Sally Field, when accepting her second Oscar for Places in the Heart, summed up the feeling perfectly:

“I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!“