Sarah Rhea Werner:

This is the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner. Episode 135, Too Afraid to Create.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And you may notice that this is the first episode in I don’t know, 9 or 10 episodes where I am here talking to you solo. My last several episodes have been interviews with people who I think are really cool or amazing, or just helpful to listen to in some way. And there’s a reason for that. Well, actually a lot of reasons, but those reasons all come down to one thing, and we’re going to talk about that thing today, because chances are it’s affected you too, in the past or in the present, or it might very well affect you in the future.

And that thing yes, is a thing we have talked about before, and that thing is fear, but I’m going to talk about it again in a way that’s very meta as it relates to today’s topic, because the fear never really goes away. I’ve talked about this on the show before, and I keep remembering this quote by Jon Acuff, whose one of my favorite writers who writes about writing, and that is, “Fear is not a dragon to be slain. It is an ocean to be swum daily.” Dealing with fear every day is just something that we have to deal with. And it manifests in different ways, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, but in a way it reminds me of… I have a very, very good friend who his father was killed in a collision with a drunk driver. And it was just completely awful in every way. And I asked my friend one day over coffee, “How do you even begin to forgive someone, this drunk driver, for taking someone away from you?”

And my friend gave me just the most mind blowing answer. He said, “Sarah, I have to forgive this guy all over again, every single day. The anger comes back, the injustice comes back and every day I have to forgive this man, a new for what he did to my family.” That just really blew my mind because I had always thought of forgiveness as something you do once, and then it’s over, right? You forgive someone and then, okay, forgive and forget, let’s move on. But no, some things are so large that they need to be dealt with every day because they resurface every day, because they’re part of our lives, like fear, like resistance. And I think there’s probably some days where we do it better than other days, or there are maybe some days when we’re not able to do it at all. So I had hit a spot with the Write Now Podcast where every time I sat down to record an episode, fear would get the better of me.

And this was fear in a lot of different forms. It wasn’t just one kind of fear. I would sit down to record an episode and before I would even plug my microphone in, before I would set up my little tube of podcasting, this piece of foam that I use to absorb sound, I would start thinking, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.” And I would start to panic and my mind would begin to race. And I would think, “I don’t have anything to say,” or, “I don’t have anything of value to say,” or, “Yeah, I could talk about that, but there’s probably someone else who could talk about it better,” or, “I’m not an expert in that topic, so I probably shouldn’t talk about it,” or, “I don’t really have the authority to teach anyone anything,” or, “Oh, I can’t talk about this topic because I already talked about it in an episode back in 2016,” or “Well, who would want to listen to me talk anyway? What I say doesn’t matter. What I think doesn’t matter.”

Have you ever had thoughts like this? Have you ever faced down feeling like you’re not enough or you’re not good enough or that you are, gasp, an imposter? I know I said this episode was going to get kind of meta, but way back in January 2016, I recorded an episode of the Write Now Podcast called, Feeling Like a Fraud. It’s episode number 34, and it is all about imposter syndrome. So here I am, facing my fears, talking to you, not feeling like an expert and in fact, very much feeling like a fraud about a topic that I’ve spoken about before, several years ago, but I’m doing it anyway because I have learned and changed a lot since then. And I think I have some new insights to share with you.

So while I really hope that you enjoyed the past several interview episodes of the Write Now Podcast, and I do hope that you go back and listen to them if you haven’t already, there with just some incredible creators and amazing people who have really smart things to say about writing and the creative process. Those episodes are also very real proof of my own fear and how fear stopped me from creating solo episodes of this show. I was too scared to even try. I think that when I spoke about imposter syndrome 101 episodes ago, back in 2016, I think my advice was, “Feel the fear and do it anyway,” which it seems like really good advice because it seems like you have two options, right? You can feel the fear and not do it, give into the fear and say, “I’ll do this later,” or, “I won’t do this at all.” And your other option is to feel the fear and to take action anyway. So you either take action or you don’t take action.

And it’s like, “Okay, well if I want this show to keep going, I need to take action and just record the episodes. But I didn’t because there’s always more than two options. I chose a sneaky option. I chose an option where I hid and I got out of the spotlight and I let that spotlight shine on other people because I didn’t want it on me. And I did that because there’s comfort and there’s safety in hiding. There’s comfort and safety in ducking out of the spotlight. There is comfort and safety in not creating, in not showing anyone else your work or in not doing the work at all. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway, implies that we’re able to make some kind of bold decision or statement or action in the face of fear, instead of slinking away sideways and doing something that’s just kind of half-hearted.

What I was doing was feeling the fear and doing it halfway, minimizing risk as I saw it. And this doesn’t just happen with podcasting. I also do this with writing. I’ll sit down to work on Girl in Space or another of my new creative projects, and I’ll feel the fear. And then I will, in the face of this fear, find something to do that kind of feels like I’m moving forward with my project, but really isn’t. So I’m scared to write this new scene of Girl in Space, or I’m scared to go back and revise episode one with something I need to change because that happens, and I’m too scared to do it. And so I’ll say, “Oh, I’ll just post on my Girl in Space Twitter for a while, and engage with fans because that’s helpful.”

Or, “I’ll go back and edit this episode that I know already kind of works,” because that’s safe, that’s comfortable. Creating something and being seen and letting your light shine is kind of scary/really scary. It exposes you to all sorts of criticism and judgment from not only others, but from yourself. It’s risky, it can even be dangerous. I didn’t take my microphone out for months and months because it felt safer not to. I wouldn’t realize that I have nothing to say, if I didn’t open mouth in the first place, if I stopped myself before I even tried to start. And here’s the thing that I’ve really been struggling with lately. Back when I was first starting my business in gosh, I think probably 2016 or 2017, I attended a lot of entrepreneurial conferences and webinars and this is all pre COVID, so they were all in person, so they were all very high energy.

And a lot of these conferences and presentations, spoke very disparagingly about something that they called the comfort zone or the safety zone. And they had all sorts of platitudes about this. And they would say, “Everything you want is on the other side of fear,” or, “Success is always outside of your comfort zone.” And I realized that they were villainizing safety and comfort in the same way that they were glorifying hustle culture, in the same way that they were glorifying working 80 hours a week and burning yourself out, and all of that stuff that can be really toxic and harmful and lead to burnout. But as I said earlier, there’s really never just two options. You don’t have to choose staying safe and hiding, versus driving yourself to burnout. There’s not just insulated safety and getting hurt as two binary choices because there’s value in both of these things.

And this is something that I have had to learn very recently. I remember years ago, after attending some of these entrepreneurial seminars, trying to convince a friend that comfort was bad and that safety was bad because it kept you frozen in place. It kept you from experimenting and taking necessary risks. And I was wrong. I’ve talked before about how fear is an instinct that doesn’t exist to harm us, it exists to keep us safe. Fear is what keeps us from engaging in a fist fight with a grizzly bear. Fear is what keeps us from walking out into traffic, but fear can hold us back a little too far, just like too much of an entrepreneurial spirit can lead us to burnout. And there’s a middle ground in there, and that’s something that I am trying to focus on choosing, and it comes with a little bit of feel the fear and do it anyway without going overboard into a place where we injure ourselves.

I want to add in a quick note here that yes, burnout is real and I’ve dealt with it. And I think that part of my fear or one of my fears is that I will burn myself out again. When I was writing the finale to season one of Girl in Space, I was also speaking at tons of conferences, I was traveling, I was doing some other projects. I was doing some paid projects and unpaid projects. I burned myself out. And what that looked like was every day I would wring out my brain like a sponge, except the sponge was dry and nothing was coming out. And all I was doing was putting more and more pressure and panic and anxiety onto myself to create and produce when my body was begging me to stop and rest.

I’d experienced this several years before as well. When I was working at the marketing agency and ghost writing books in my spare time and doing all sorts of volunteer leadership activities, and I had walking pneumonia for several months. Hustle culture. Doesn’t let us stop. It doesn’t let us let ourselves stop. And I didn’t really believe in burnout or I easily dismissed burnout, until I experienced it, not just the first time, but the second time around. And I realized that I was losing more by not taking small breaks and resting every day. I was losing more by burning myself out and then not being able to create for months on end with my brain being a dry sponge, with needing physically, mentally, spiritually to heal.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in burnout, I just didn’t take it seriously. And in fact, burnout seemed to be a kind of badge of honor. Like we talk about, “Oh, I’m so busy. I’m so busy,” and busy is a badge of honor, it shows that we’re producing and we’re doing all the things and everyone should be impressed with us and pity us for how much we’re driving ourselves into the ground for the sake of X, Y, or Z.

I don’t want to be pitied. I don’t want to burn out. And I had to burn out twice, really hard, before I realized what a waste of time it is to push yourself too hard, to break, to disparage safety. So I think that somewhere between not creating and keeping yourself 100% isolated, insulated and safe, and the other side of the spectrum, which is pushing yourself so hard that you hurt yourself. Somewhere in between those two poles, is satisfaction with your life and work. I realize I’m not saying anything groundbreaking here, but at the same time, this was something that was groundbreaking for me. It’s not all or nothing. I’m going to jump into that ocean of fear and go for a swim. I’m not going to stop swimming and drown, and I’m not going to push myself so hard that I get a cramp.

I’m just going to swim. Perhaps more importantly, I’m going to get into the water, whatever that means for you. For me, for this episode, it meant getting my microphone out and turning it on, making a cup of coffee, taking some deep breaths and telling myself this doesn’t have to be an award-winning podcast. This doesn’t have to blow people’s minds. It just has to be enough to help them keep going. It just has to be enough to let them know that they can do this. It just has to be enough to let them know that they are not alone because you’re not alone. I’m not alone. Every single creator feels this fear. We’re putting our hearts on the line. We’re putting our stories out in front of a crowd that is scary, but what do you want to do with that fear? And it’s not just a decision we make once, and then it’s all over.

Just like my friend who had to forgive the man who killed his father, we have to do it every single day. And there’s going to be some days where it’s hard and hopefully some days where it’s easy. There are going to be some days when we don’t think that jumping in is a good idea. And we need to really assess, “Okay, do I need a day off? Because writing is hard work. Creating is hard work. Will taking a day off, allow me to have the energy I need tomorrow to do some really good work?” There’s going to be days when we jump in and it feels too overwhelming, and we climb right back out again. And there’s going to be days when we jump in and we feel we need to make up for something and we overdo it and we hurt ourselves.

But hopefully, there are also going to be days where we jump in metaphorically and we swim until we feel good, until we feel a sense of peace, a sense of satisfaction that we’ve done something good with our talents that day. And for all of the other days, we need to learn to give ourselves grace. We need to learn to forgive ourselves. We’re not machines. We’re not productivity machines. Despite what everything in our culture tells us. We are weird human sized bags of chemicals and meat and fluids and weird electrical signals. We’re more magic than we are science. I’m not anti-science. I just realize that there’s a lot of things that we have not been able to fully explain yet, and how our brains work is just one of them. I think sometimes, or at least I have to do this. I have to forgive myself for being human and feeling hunger and tiredness and getting sick and needing time to process the crazy world events that take up our TV screens and our Twitter feeds and our everyday conversations.

We need to really live into the fact that we’re human and acknowledge and embrace what that means. We need to keep giving ourselves chances and not give on ourselves, or our creative projects. So what do you do when you find yourself in a space where you are too afraid to create, you’re too afraid to move forward with a project? And afraid here can mean any number of things. The fear can manifest itself as imposter syndrome, as feeling like you’re not enough, so you’re not smart enough, not dedicated enough. You don’t have enough focus. The fear might be turning to something else to occupy your time and attention while you avoid your creative project. You might just feel a deep need for comfort and safety and put your risk-taking work on hold for a little bit. What do you do? Or what do you want to do aspirationally, when this happens?

How do you want to act in the face of fear and how can you realistically act every day in the face of fear? One thing that has been helpful for me that has really surprised me has been, I hate to say this because I feel like this is so not me, but building habits. I know, I know, I hate schedules. I hate routine. I thought I hated habits. It turns out a habit can be a simple thing. Sitting down in your chair with a cup of coffee at 8:00 AM every morning. Standing up at your standing desk every Saturday afternoon at 2:00 PM, with a glass of ice water and your book of poetry. This can look like a million different things. But building something regular into our lives gives us the time and space to do what we need and want to do to feel satisfied with our creative lives.

For me, building a daily writing habit was an act of giving myself the time and permission to write every day. If you build a habit into a muscle memory, into something that you do automatically, it takes away one more step of resistance. It takes away one more executive function that you have to make that day because you’re doing it automatically. I get to bypass a lot of hard decisions. I don’t have to decide, am I going to write today? And when? And how is it going to fit into my schedule, and do I need to cancel a bunch of things in order to find time to write and do I need to rearrange this and this? No, the decision is already made by the habit. Maybe this is me getting old. Maybe this is me losing some of the chaos that rules my life. Maybe this is me maturing, heaven forbid. But maybe this is also me taking care of myself and taking care of my creative self in a way that’s healthy and necessary for fully living in to my creative life.

So what are you going to do next time that the fear rises up within you and begs with you to stay in bed or to spend your writing time on social media or to give up, crumple up your poem, throw it in the trash, give up? Giving up is easy, but it’s not satisfying. Pushing yourself to the point of burnout and breaking yourself is really hard and it’s valued in our society, but it’s not healthy. And maybe after all these years, what I’m getting at, finally, is just some semblance of work, life and writing balance, which I don’t know if I believe in anymore, but it sure is a nice idea. All we can do is move forward. All we can do is experiment with our own creativity. All we can do is give ourselves grace and forgiveness when we fail. All we need to do is just feel the fear and decide what we want to do with it.

Sit down and write, go for a walk, take some deep breaths. Call a friend who understands. Join us in our Writers Discord. What is healthy and good, and what is satisfying for your creative spirit? Thank you for listening to today’s episode. I know it’s been awhile and I’ve been through a lot to get here. Thank you for bearing with me. Thank you for understanding. I hope that you’ve enjoyed the past several interviews. I hope that you have found value from them. I hope that you’ve connected with the folks that I’ve interviewed. They are just really fantastic people. It felt good to give them a platform while I was too afraid to create anything on my own. I also want to say thank you to my lovely and beautiful and amazing patrons out on Patreon. Patreon is a secure, third party donation platform that allows you, yes, you, to donate a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, whatever you feel is right for you.

And again, if supporting the show financially is not something that you’re into right now or not something that’s possible or just something you don’t want to do, that is completely 1,000,000% fine. I’m just grateful you’re listening. But I do want to send out a special thanks to the patrons who make this possible. These are the people who finance this show being made. So I’d like to thank Amber Fertessi, Kayla Mary Heal, Tamra Case Selman, Christine Black, Laurie, Regina Calabrese, Dennis Martin, Liz, not Lizzie, Mark Bullock, Michael Beckwith, Mike Taft, Sarah Banham, Summer, Tiffany Joiner and Whitney Magruder. These are the incredible, generous people who make this show possible. Thank you so much for your donations. Again, if you want to be a Patreon patron, you can join us out on Patreon. That’s patreon.com/sarahrheawarner.

Wow, it’s been a while. You can also very easily become a patron by going to the show notes for today’s episodes, this is episode number 135, by scrolling down in the show notes until you see a button that says help support this podcast, clicking that button, and it will take you where you need to go, where you can make your pledge. And again, there’s no pressure. If being a patron is not the thing for you, that is totally fine, and I love and respect you and think you’re great, no matter what. So thank you.

Just a few quick, final things. Again, you can find the show notes for today’s episode out at sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. I also have a whole bunch of free resources and videos and eBooks and stuff that you can download for free over at my website. Again, sarahwerner.com. You can also sign up for my Dear Creators Newsletter, which is sort of like a miniature version of this podcast. So I basically write you a letter once a week, and I send it to your email inbox and it arrives on Monday morning, so you can start your week with a little bit of thoughtfulness and inspiration and hopefully some good creative vibes for the week. Again, the newsletter is called Dear Creators, and you can sign up for it over on my website, sarahwerner.com. So make sure you do that. It’s pretty cool. How’s that for an endorsement? It’s pretty cool. I feel like I should be doing some finger guns with that, it’s pretty cool.

I also do free, create a-longs, live create a-longs out on Twitch. So if you’re not following me on Twitch already, you can totally do that. They’re free every Wednesday at 7:00 PM Central. Currently, there’s just about 50 of us who get together and we chat about creativity for 30 minutes. We write together for an hour, and then we do a little recap on how was it? Did you struggle with anything? What did you learn? What did you realize? How did your writing go? All of that stuff. Again, those are live streams every Wednesday at 7:00 PM over on my Twitch channel, which is twitch.tv/sarahrheawerner. That’s S-A-R-A-H R-H-E-A W-E-R-N-E-R. There’s also a link to that on the homepage of my website. So, you know what, maybe I should just be directing people to my website for everything, because then you don’t have to remember all of these websites.

There will also be links to everything in the show notes for today’s episode, again, out on my website. Sometimes I forget how much I enjoy podcasting and I am finishing up today’s episode with a really big smile on my face and so much gratitude in my heart. So I just want to say again, thank you for listening, but also thank you for your patience and grace, as I continue to stumble forward and learn what it means to be a creator in real life. And with that, this has been episode 135 of the Write Now Podcast. The podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy and courage, you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner, and I believe in you.