Response to Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s February 15, 2023, Blog Post on How Writers Fail Part 11

This article starts almost by apologizing for its harsh…or blunt…beginning, but it touched a chord for me. You can find it here: https://kriswrites.com/2023/02/15/business-musings-how-writers-fail-part-11-they-want-to/

Sure, it’s blunt, but blunt is good - and this article pretty much describes the battle I've slowly been winning against myself...although it is not failure I was afraid of, but success. I mean, I *know* how to handle failure. Success, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast.

Four years ago, I *cried* if someone said they'd read and enjoyed my book. Someone telling me they hated it, not a problem; I was used to people not liking what I did, or not liking that I was the one who did it.

That was normal...and comfortable - but doing something right? Something approved of? Well, sometimes it was better to fail than to face *that*.

I've fought that particular demon for years.

Some of you have heard me use the analogy of a rider bringing a young horse back around to the fence it's just refused to jump, letting it look that fence over, and bringing it back for another go at jumping it.

I usually use it when someone has failed and wants to try again and is afraid to. I tell them to be kind to themselves, in the same way you have to be kind and patient with a horse learning to jump. It's something I learned from someone who trained showjumpers, way back in my dim, dark past.

You keep showing the horse the fence, and getting it used to approaching it and the idea it can actually go over it. You show it other horses succeeding. You don't punish it for being afraid, you calm it and bring it 'round again…and again, until eventually it takes that fence in its stride.

Facing our fears is just like that.

So you shot yourself in the foot again, failed, fell off, screwed up. It doesn't matter if you failed accidentally, on purpose, accidentally-on-purpose, or through subconscious sabotage, the question is: Do you want that next step badly enough to keep trying until you get yourself past that fence and can face it without taking a deliberate misstep, running out, or crashing into it?

Oh my, how terrible, I failed again. 'Oops.'

Handling the approval that comes with success, the attention that comes with doing something people like and want more of, can be just as much, or more, of a hurdle than doing the thing, itself - and can act as a deterrent for successfully doing the thing in the first place. It's the next 'level' of that kind of jump.

Great, you managed the post-and-rail, but can you manage the water jump we've morphed it into?

Again, the question is do you want the level beyond that enough to learn how to deal with it?

As this article says, "there is no magic bullet or easy solution".

How do I, personally, try to get past it? I have something I want to achieve with my writing, beyond just seeing it published - that was the first step. I've found I need something to have multiple pluses at the end to make it worth it. I need it to dovetail with other goals. I can't do it just for the sake of doing it. That's not enough.

Now, I write because I enjoy it, because it makes a modest income I can put toward what my family needs, because it gives someone else an escape from the world for a while. And I create video to remain accountable, to share a game I enjoy with others who might also enjoy it, and to enjoy a game I love. Maybe one day, that, too, will make a modest income. It would be nice, but who knows if it will ever be?

Multi-purpose works for me.

The second step was learning what to expect *if* I succeeded, then deciding *to* accept it, and *then* learning the skills to deal with it. That last bit is hard. How do you learn to handle praise or learning you made people happy, especially when that hasn't been something you've dealt with before...or when it hasn't always been a positive thing in the past.

You learn by doing. Happy viewers who care enough to comment when I do something that helps them, or that they enjoy. A dev who recommends players of their game watch my video...and who doesn't tell me. Happy readers who mention they enjoyed one of my books (and not necessarily to me, but in a random Tweet or FB post), or who recommend a book to someone else because they enjoyed it. Those still blow my mind when I stumble across them, but at least I no longer burst into tears on seeing them.

All of those used to make me cry because I didn’t know how to handle it. I learned those things were good things and to be treasured, and eventually reached a point where I could say thank you without crying where no-one could see. (Well, most of the time, anyway.) Now, I strive even harder to do what I do better, so those folk can have something they enjoy, regardless of whether they let me know or not.

And I am grateful to all those people. They’ve taught me a lot, one of the important things being not to be as afraid of trying to succeed – and I’m grateful to Kris for this article and for digging into the subconscious whys behind why many of us face those fears.

It's easier to face something when you understand some of what lies behind it.