July 1, 2015

IWSG - overcoming our fears

today, i'm sharing what others have to say about overcoming our fears about writing...

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face…You must do the thing you cannot do.”~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~ (not exactly a writing quote, but appropriate just the same.)

“You are a writer. Right now. With only what you have in your head as it is. You don’t need anything else. You are a writer. You just need to keep writing. Don’t let the Writing Fairy tell you that you aren’t. That you need something more, that you’re pretending to be something you’re not. Hemmingway wasn’t Hemmingway when he started. He was just a guy named Ernest who sat down at his typewriter.” ~ Joseph Devon

“Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act–truth is always subversive.” ~ Anne Lamott,Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.” ~ Bonnie Friedman

“Anyone can become a writer. The trick is staying a writer.” ~ Harlan Ellison

“If you hear a voice within you saying, ‘You are not a painter,’ then by all means paint . . . and that voice will be silenced.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” ~ Claude M. Bristol

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’“ ~ Mary Anne Rademacher-Hershey

“I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.” ~ John Steinbeck
“You fail only if you stop writing.” ~ Ray Bradbury

“You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working, steadily day by day, quite steadily, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.” ~ Anton Chekhov

“Every day you are afraid. Every day you move through fear to your desk, and as soon as you pick up your pen, or read the sentence left over from the night before, incomplete, needing an adjustment in rhythm—a stronger verb, a slash of color or the taste of bitter herbs—in that moment of solving the problems all fear dissolves. You are writing again.” ~ Sophy Burnham

“You’re not afraid of writing. You’re afraid of failing. We all fail. The courage is in the trying.” ~ From the movie Shadows in the Sun ~
to read what other encouraging posts about our insecurities, go to the Insecure Writers' Support Group blog. 

13 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Risk being unliked. That's always a scary thing.

dolorah said...

Staying a writer is the toughest part. These are great quotes Michelle.

Unknown said...

Thank you for those. That was just the pick me up I needed for a day of killing my darlings :-)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing these quotes! I'm saving them to a list of what I need to read when I'm feeling down about my writing.

Susan Kane said...

I echo Alex. We all want to be liked/loved, but that seldom happens. Good advice.

Laurel Garver said...

A veritable truckload of encouragement here. Thanks, Michelle. We all get plagued by these what ifs: what if people hate this? what if I hurt someone? what if I don't know what happens next? what if this idea is stupid?

Writing is a courageous act!

Unknown said...

The fear of failure is so true and unsettling. This encouragement is actually much needed today.

M Pax said...

Eleanor and Vincent's quotes really struck me. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Sharon K. Mayhew said...

I love the last one! Thanks for sharing!

Jennifer Hawes said...

Staying a writer! Yes, so many give up just short of their dreams coming true. I love this job:)

Nissa Annakindt said...

Inspirational quotes. It's important to write and keep writing. But also to work on essential skills for your craft. I've known people who can't write a correctly spelled and grammatical Facebook post who write novels. Learning those basic skills would save hours and hours of rewrite time.

http://myantimatterlife.wordpress.com

me said...

I appreciate true honesty in whatever form it takes. Great post.

Olivia J. Herrell, writing as O.J. Barré said...

I loved these Michelle, thank you! Several of them landed! It's really good to see your blog is still here. I'm just making the rounds for the first time in, ummm, YEARS and so many are gone.

~ Olivia J. Herrell