I think every writer at one point or another hits a moment of fear. The fear of success hits you but it’s the fear of failure that almost freezes you to the spot.
You work harder on your novel beyond the effort you give your current job or your life. You spend hours without sleep to prefect lines. You write sections 10 times to get characters to sound real and with emotions.
One night in the blackness of a room it hits you. What if it’s for nothing? What if it doesn’t sell? What if no one wants to read your book?
What if you fail?
If you get lucky, you realize how lame those thoughts really are to have at this point in the game. I mean you are judging your whole career as a writer on one book. One. Why is it so important for this one to define us? Granted no one wants their hard work to be laughed at or mocked or to mean nothing. Other than that let’s get real with these thoughts. Let’s really think about it.
My favorite authors of all time are Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis. They wrote the Dragonlance Series. My favorite series from them is the Deathgate Cycle Series. Never heard of it? Check it out sometime. Pretty cool in my opinion.
But let’s look at their wonderful career as writers. Sure they had a huge success with the Dragonlance Series. Anyone who has ever heard of this duo knows about it but how many books did they write before they hit gold? A lot.
Don’t think so. Well there was a trilogy called Dark Sword first. Far as I know it didn’t do well as a seller. I tried to read it but couldn’t get myself into the storyline. That is 3. Then you have the Rose of a Prophet for 3 and Deathgate Cycle was a 7 book series. Okay now we have 3 +3 +7 for a total of 13 before we even get to Dragonlance.
And this is just what the duo wrote together. So at least 13 novels were written, drafts were done and hard long hours of sweat and swearing were given into these. For what? Well, to get better. To make a name for themselves. To …. I have no idea but I do know it was a long haul before they saw much from any of these.
I’m not saying their books bombed but if you ask anyone what this duo wrote, their first answer is almost always Dragonlance and not the other first 13 novels.
So don’t freak out, stress or fear failure. It might not be you failed. It might be your unknown or the novel your mind will create that will sing off a page hasn’t been written yet. You can’t give up. Not after only one. One is not much of anything even if it feels like the world. Keep writing and keep pushing forward. Maybe who knows, you might get your Dragonlance fairy tale. 🙂
Terra