This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 98: Writers’ Risk And Potential Loss. 

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 last week, I really enjoyed recording the episode Permission To Suck, so that’s episode 97. If you haven’t heard it yet, go ahead and listen to it. It gives you permission to be where you are in your writer’s journey right now and to accept that, so that you can move on to become the writer, or the creator that you’ve always wanted to be. I released that episode, and I got so much lovely and wonderful feedback.

It was really affirming and really nice, and it’s one of the most meaningful conversations that came out of releasing that episode was after my friend, Jordan, listened to it. I’ve talked about Jordan on this show before. Jordan is a New York-based creator who has made amazing things such as Janus Descending and Primordial Deep, which are audio dramas similar… Well, not similar to Girl In Space, but it’s the same medium as Girl In Space. If you want to listen to some amazing fictional podcasts, download Janus Descending, that’s spelled with a J and also Primordial Deep, which is her newest show. They’re fantastic and I am proud and honored to call Jordan a good friend.

We were having this really good discussion over text message, which as a person who I know this is going to sound weird, I hate talking on the phone. I have this weird phobia about it. Most of my conversations are held either in person looking at the other person’s face, or via text. We were having a very meaningful text conversation and Jordan says, “Okay, I listened to Permission To Suck, and I really appreciated it, but what happens after you create something successful? Do you have permission to suck all over again, or is there something else at stake? Because it’s one thing to be terrible with the first thing you create.

What happens if you create something successful and then the next thing you create, you feel a sense of a need to prove that you’ve grown, that you’ve improved, you need to solidify your reputation, you need to prove,” and this is Jordan’s language,” that you weren’t just a fluke or a flash in the pan?” Wow, let me tell you, this smacked me upside the head in the absolute best way. Those of you who know the story behind my audio drama Girl In Space know that for whatever reason, be it luck or talent or the alignment of the stars, it was a success. It was a success as an audio drama. It earns me money. It grew a beautifully, eager, and amazing fan base who loved sharing the word of the story.

It affected people’s lives in a way that was truly meaningful to me and the IP, the intellectual property is currently in adaptation for another form of media. It seems like after something like that, I should be eagerly writing season two. I should be furiously scribbling. I should be diving into this joyous landscape that my brain has created, but if you’ve been listening to this podcast, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, if you’ve been texting me on Wednesday afternoons, when I’m sitting in my office, just short of bashing my forehead against the edge of my desk repeatedly, that has not been my experience, because every day I look at what I’m creating for season two.

I think what happens after you create something successful? What happens if you were just a flash in the pan? What happens if you were just a fluke? My audience has expectations now. What if I set those expectations too high with the first season, and I can’t live up to it? What if that beautiful cocktail of luck and talent and the alignment of the stars and planets, what if that’s not there for me a second time? Do I have permission to suck? Is there room for season two to be terrible in a way that will not lose me everything that I’ve gained? To top it all, this time, this ride is going to be public.

I know that I’ve lost some of my audience because of the giant gap that has existed between season one and season two, and that’s absolutely okay, but the people who have stayed on, they have expectations for season two. They’re going to be looking for it. They’re waiting for it and if it’s not good, if it’s not better than season one, if I can’t show that I’ve learned and that I’ve grown, if I prove to them that season one was just a flash in the pan, then what happens? I talked in a recent episode about how we level up as a creator, and how we’re always growing and learning and changing, but what if that ladder isn’t a linear climb?

What if you climb up a couple of rungs, and then you fall off, and people look at you and say, “Wow, okay. I guess she’s not that good at climbing ladders,” or how I hear it in my head, “Huh? Wow. I thought she was good at this, but it turns out, nu-huh (negative), she fell off that ladder. Wow, season two is not that great. In fact, it’s meh, time to dismiss her forever.” I told Jordan over text that I am terrified of being relegated to the realm of meh and subsequently forever dismissed as a creator. This was a fear that I didn’t understand fully until Jordan articulated it for me. I am so grateful to be a member of a creative community and to have a creative support system, where other people understand my problems better than I do.

Jordan, thank you. Jordan is also facing a similar fear and actually wrote a really beautiful Twitter thread about it, which you can find on her Twitter out @inkphemeral, which I will link to in the show notes for today’s episode. She chased the thought down to essentially, you know what, we have our whole lives to suck and succeed in alternating turns forever, and there will always be people who appreciate your work just as there are always people who are going to be nasty about your work. There’s always going to be haters, but there’s always going to be people who find something valuable in what you produce and create. I’m very grateful for that response.

It also reminded me of something that my good friend, Christopher Reynaga, said. Christopher is the creator of Point Mystic, which is another, just really amazing audio drama. If you haven’t listened to Point Mystic, one of my favorite arcs is the White Rabbit story, which you can download, but Christopher said, “You’re going to start and stop your career many times over throughout your lifetime,” and that really resonated with me. Even more, what resonated with me is that he continued and said, “Every single album by Weird Al was a comeback album,” and that gave me a lot of hope. That gave me a huge amount of hope. Maybe every project that I create has the hope of being a comeback project if one of my future projects is a huge failure, or is dismally disappointing, or does not meet my audience’s expectations.

There’s always the chance that I can come back from that. There’s always the chance of a comeback. There’s always the chance that all is not lost forever. As Jordan and I were having this discussion, and as I continued to think about it for days after, I remembered one of my favorite TED Talks by Elizabeth Gilbert. This TED Talk is over a decade old and I’ve listened to it many times. Every time I listen to it, I hear something new, it’s that good. This Ted talk is called Your Elusive Creative Genius, and I’ve spoken about it on this show before I think probably many times. It inspired my episode about muses, which you can listen to. In this time, I remembered that she recorded this TED Talk after her sensational success of Eat, Pray, Love.

I remember that she started, “I’m terrified because people keep asking me after the success of Eat, Pray, Love, aren’t you afraid that you’ll never be able to top that?” She talks about her work after Eat, Pray, Love as the over anticipated follow up to my freakish success. Okay. Just a quick point of clarification here, I am in no way comparing or equating my little science fiction podcast to the enormous global success, and Julia Roberts starring movie that was Eat, Pray, Love, but what Elizabeth Gilbert did in this talk was validate this fear that I had that, yeah, what if I’m done? What if I’ve peaked? What if I am never able to create something that good ever again?

I’ll make sure to link to that TED Talk in the show notes for today’s episode, because it’s just so rich, and you’ll probably get things out of it that I haven’t even considered yet. What I really love most about this TED Talk is the questions that she asks, and that includes what if my greatest success is behind me? She jokes that that’s the kind of question that can get you drinking gin at 9 a.m. Then she goes deeper, and here’s what really struck me during this listen through because she asks, “Is it rational? Is it logical that anyone should expect to be afraid of the work they feel they were put on this earth to do? Is it possible for us to be undone by our gifts?”

Wow, that is a heavy question because I’m a writer and you are a writer. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, or project my own experience onto you in any way, but I feel like it’s very common for writers like us to experience fear, fear of what we do, fear of how we’ll be perceived, fear of being judged, fear of finding out we’re maybe just a flash in the pan or a fluke. It’s the fear that accompanies taking a risk. It’s the fear that comes when we have something to lose. It’s the kind of fear that has essentially stopped me in my tracks. I like that people liked season one of Girl In Space, and I’m terrified to lose that. Now, is that a giant show of ego? Yeah, I think so.

My ego is like, “No, protect me. Don’t create anything else ever again, because it might not be good and then people will no longer say that you’re good, and then I will be sad because I am your ego,” but is it rational? Is it logical that I should be afraid to move forward and create? Is it rational? Is it logical that I should feel like my entire personhood is at stake when I take the risk of creating and then publishing, or releasing a second season? What’s at stake?

Because if you think about it in one sense, any act of creation and any publication or release of that creation is risky, and we can perceive that there’s a lot at stake from our reputation as a creator, to the amount of money that we make, to how we have spent our time and our energy to the opportunities, trajectory, and potential access that are in front of us for our future. Am I overthinking this? Probably. Do a lot of us overthink this? Probably. It’s so hard to determine what is actually at stake and what are we imagining is at stake.

I know that the fear is illogical and irrational and trying to counter it with logic and reason might not work as well as I would like it to, but when the terms of creation are only thought about, or spoken about in terms of loss, that’s where I think I and maybe you have a problem. Because there’s not only potential risk and potential loss, but there’s potential abundance as well, and I think that we forget that. I think that the fear makes us forget that. Would you describe yourself as a risk taker, or would you describe yourself as risk averse? For years and decades, I was a risk averse person.

I get very uncomfortable breaking rules, and I have enough scarcity in my mindset that the potential for loss overrides the potential for gain, but I’ve taken a lot of risks in the past couple of years. I worked in marketing for a decade before I abruptly got fed up and left my job to be self-employed. I left a secure, full-time position with guaranteed income to write full-time for myself with no business degree. That is a thing that I did. That is a huge risk that I took, but why did I take it? Well, I took it because I was done, I was so fed up. I just could not stay where I was any longer. Once I saw and perceived that that risk did not kill me, I slowly became comfortable taking additional risks, creating, publishing, public speaking.

What is it for you? What is it that causes you, or helps you to take risks? Is it a sense of being fed up? Is it simply fun for you to do? Are you simply a rebel with, or without a cause? I’m at that crossroads again where I need to take a risk, and I don’t want to wait until I am at a breaking point before I take it. It’s always healthy to ask, “Okay, what’s the worst that could actually happen.?” When I initially left my day job, I thought, “Oh, well, you know, I could end up dead in a gutter,” but it’s a really long road to dead in a gutter. It rests on this notion that I don’t have friends and family and a healthy support system, and people who care about me and who would let me sleep on their couch if I needed to.

What’s the worst that can happen in that situation? Well, a little bit of struggle until I get back on my feet. What’s the worst that could happen with season two of Girl In Space? Well, it could be a giant flop and everyone could hate it, and it could drag the show down to one star, and then I would move on and create something else. When I ask, what is it you’ve got to lose, what I’m asking is, is it actually possible to lose? What is at stake, and is it actually at stake? If it is at stake, is it actually important to you? Ultimately at the end of the day, will you let yourself be defined by a group of strangers on the internet who you have never met? Is that what defines you?

Once you have a failure, there’s nothing that says you can’t come back from it. Like my friend Christopher said, “You’ll stop and start your career over many times throughout your life. That’s just how being a creator works.” There’s some freedom and knowing that there’s some abundance and knowing that in that you have permission to fail, even after you’ve seen success. You have permission to suck. You don’t want to obviously. I don’t want to, but everything is not terrible and ruined forever if you make a misstep, if you take a risk that doesn’t pan out.

It comes from Elizabeth Gilbert asking, “Are we going to be undone by our gifts? Are we going to live in fear that we’ll never be able to top what we’ve created before, that we might screw up, that we might be forever relegated to the realm of meh and forever dismissed?” At the end of her TED Talk, Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Will what I create be forever judged and compared to Eat, Pray, Love? Does it matter? Am I going To let that get in the way of doing what I feel in my heart that I was put on this earth to do? Is it going to prevent me from showing up and doing my work, from showing up and being a meaningful presence on the earth?” Here’s the real scary thing.

You can’t guarantee that something you create or do will be a success. There’s no guarantees. Even if the writing is amazing, even if the performances are astounding, even if you got the perfect cover art for your novel, there are no guarantees of success, or if you want to look at the other side of the coin, failure. When there are no guarantees, every single thing we do is a risk. The question that we need to ask is, am I willing to show up? Am I willing to be brave? Am I willing to be resilient? To remember the words of John Coltrane who says, “The real risk is in not changing.” It sounds really trite and cliche to say this, but our journeys as creators, they’re not just going to be a forever upward trajectory.

Even if we have previous success to bolster us, we’re still going to face rejection. Charlie Kaufman has trouble paying his mortgage and he’s a household name as a writer and a director. I’d like to encourage you by asking, what do you have to gain by taking this risk, this risk of creating, of writing, of publishing, of producing? What’s the good that can come out of that? If you’re anything like me, you get a great amount of joy and fulfillment from simply doing the work, from simply pressing your pen, or pencil to the paper, from simply typing out sentence after sentence onto your laptop or your typewriter.

There is an existential joy that comes with the act of fulfilling your purpose, of creating, of writing and no matter how your work is perceived after you share it with the world, no one can take that joy, that meaning, that purpose away from you. Let’s create for ourselves. Let’s create for ourselves because the criticism, the judgment as to whether our work is a success or a failure, that’s not within our control. All we can do, all that is within our control as writers and creators, ll we can do is sit down and do the work that we were made to do. Take a risk every day and write. I don’t create the Write Now Podcast alone.

As I said earlier, I have so many amazing people in my creative and support networks, such as Jordan, such as Christopher, such as my partner, Tim, such as my family and friends. I am so grateful to each and every one of them for helping me stay on the path that is the creative journey. I am also extremely grateful for the people who make this show possible. These people are the all around, kind and thoughtful and generous folks who donate to this show on Patreon. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows you to donate $1 per episode, $2 per episode, $10,000 per episode, whatever you feel like this show is worth to you. I wouldn’t be anywhere without these amazing people.

Special thanks go out to Amanda Dixon, Julian Vincent Thornburgh, Laurie, Leslie Madsen, Regina Calabrese, Sean Locke, Susan Geiger, TJ Bricke, Tiffany Joyner, Leslie Duncan, Ricardo Lugo, and Sarah Lauzon. Thank you all so much for your kind and generous support. You helped me make this show available ad-free to people all over the globe, so thank you. Thank you so much. If you would like to comment about this episode, if you want to get in touch with me, I would love to hear your thoughts. You can find the show notes for this episode out at sarahwerner.com. That’s sarahwerner.com.

You can navigate to the show notes for this episode, episode number 98, and let me know what helps you to take the risks that you need to take in order to create? What keeps you showing up? What keeps you resilient, or are you in a place where fear is holding you back? I would love to know more about your journey as a writer. Also out at my website, you’ll find all sorts of free stuff. Most of the stuff that I make is free. You can find links to… I have a couple of eBooks that you can download. I have my blog that you can read. I have this podcast. I have links to the Girl In Space Podcast. I have a sign up for my newsletter, which is called Dear Creators, which I send out every Monday, and it just offers extra encouragement and inspiration to writers just like yourself.

Go check out everything that I offer. Again, most of it is free and freely available to you. Do take advantage of that and with that, this has been Episode 98 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 right. I’m Sarah Werner, and I am going to go boldly forth and take some risks.