Should I write scared?

Question

Is it better to push yourself in your writing? To attempt bigger and deeper stories than you've done before? K.M. Weiland says so. But then there's this thread (which is talking about music performance, yes), which implies that the only way to perform perfectly is to hold back just a little and do something that's comfortable or easy for you

What is the value of each? Are lasting stories only created when you're writing scared? On the other hand, are you more likely to write a best-seller if you try something within your comfort zone?

EDIT: I should add that there seem to be multiple ways of writing scared:

• Fear because you are baring your soul and writing past your own defenses.
• Fear because you don't feel skilled enough - the scene requires more characters than you can juggle, or a more complex plot, or subtler emotions than you've written before.

One is a matter of content, the other of skill level. I'm interested in both.

Answer 1

Music is a performance art, it takes place in "real time." Writing does not. So while there is an inevitable trade-off between spontaneity and polish for a musician, the same is not true for a writer, whose spontaneity is always an illusion. Your characters can be smarter and wittier than you, if you need them to be, because you can take hours to think of (or research) what they have available at the tip of their tongues.

In a sense, that's all peripheral to your real question: Should you play it safe or take risks? However, it's deceptive to look at this as an "or" question. Great artists of whatever the discipline must take risks, and leave their comfort zone, it's the only way they grow and expand their powers. But their best and most lasting work may not necessarily come directly from these initial experiments, but from the maturity of their mastery of whatever it is. There is no great artist without some ambitious failures hidden in their catalog.

So yes, go ahead and "write scared" if that's what it takes for you. Go out on a limb, take some risks. But don't be distressed if this "risky" book isn't the bestseller you're looking for. You can't be a good writer until you come to terms with the fact that not every word you write is directly for your audience. Sometimes what we write enlivens the final writing, but isn't directly contained in it. To put it another way, sometimes you have to write a lot of dross (or writer's notes, or unpublishable backstory, or failed experiments) to get to that nugget of gold.

Answer 2

You should write inspired. You should write in response to vision. Great work is work of great vision, work that sees what we ordinarily miss about human life. Tackling your vision may or may not be scary, but that is beside the point. If you have looked into the abyss, your vision may have terrified you and writing it down may be to relive that terror (though it may also be to expurgate it). If you have looked into heaven, your vision may have delighted and enthralled you, and writing it down may come in a rush of joy (though living in that state can be exhausting, and sometimes those who start that way spend themselves and lose their joy and motivation before they finish).

Write inspired. Don't be afraid to express your vision, whether that vision is of terror or delight.

Answer 3

Neil Gaiman said "Make good art." In the same speech he says:

The moment that you feel that just possibly you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself - that's the moment you may be starting to get it right.

and

The things I've done that worked the best were the things I was the least certain about; the stories I was sure would either work, or more likely be the kind of embarrassing failures that people would gather together and discuss until the end of time.

Which would answer, I think, both aspects of your question. Yes, write past your defences, and yes, stretch your comfort zone. How would you grow as an artist, if you stay forever in the narrow circle of what you've done before, and know you can repeat? How do you expect to touch others with your literature, if you don't let it get past your defences, don't let it touch you?

And finally, don't go looking for "the next bestseller". To quote Neil Gaiman yet again,

Don't write books just for the money. If you don't get the money, then you don't have anything. If you do work you're proud of, and you don't get the money, at least you'd have the work.

Answer 4

I'm not really a writer, but I argue that in writing, or art, or programming, or any other skill, there is play and there is purpose - and which comes natural (and which doesn't) differs from person to person.

As an example, "To attempt bigger and deeper stories than you've done before" can be done with the attitude of, "Let's see what happens..!" or it can be done with the attitude of, "I will focus on [topic; maybe story complexity?] with the goal of, [being much more complex than before]"

For some, "play" is too loose. There is no goal. Nothing to drive one into motion or give feedback on performance.

For others, "purpose" is too strict. It bleeds out the enjoyment and the final result can end up abused because other factors that are not expressly in the purpose get ignored.

It's a lot more stressful to try and take the attitude that you are not accustomed too, but at the same time sometimes that is the path to growing the most.

I'd advise growing in the way that works best for you most of the time; but if you feel a block and need either new discipline or new passion, to go with the other approach.

Answer 5

I'd never write scared (of either variety).

I might write something challenging, but not scared.

I would include in the "not scared" category, being unafraid to rewrite, unafraid to cut large passages or multiple scenes, unafraid to make a major revision to the story.

I do not attempt to write above my skill level or technical capability, I don't think that makes a better story, it makes it worse. I get better at writing by experience, when I see how other writers have done something tricky, or when I have a new thought for showing something or a good plot twist. I won't ever force it, I believe that would show in the writing. Greater skill will come when I am ready for it, in the meantime I can write a good publishable story.

I don't think most professional writers agree with Weiland; I read what several have said, when writing about their methods on writing, and most or all write because they enjoy it and the craft. Their stories and style change little over the course of their series. Perhaps it gets a little better, but they aren't challenging themselves to do anything but invent new plots, settings and characters about once a year. None of it seems particularly difficult, just imaginative.

As far as "emotional baring", I don't do it. To the extent I consider writing therapeutic, only as much as a hobby like woodworking or darts or video games. I try to give my characters real and plausible emotions, from hatreds to passionate love, from laughter to grief. But they are not me baring my soul.

My goal in writing is only and always to entertain readers, to help them imagine in a few days what it took me six months to imagine and two or three months to refine.

But I am writing fiction, nothing else, and I don't try to sneak an autobiography in it (although my personal experiences certainly inform my characters), or a political or social philosophy (I do have clear ideas on right and wrong in both, but I also strive to know why people I consider wrong think they are right).

Don't write scared. Write about characters doing interesting things (that you also find interesting), write to explore such characters without fear. Do your research when it is needed: I spent a half day on the Internet once learning how a doctor in the wilderness could successfully accomplish a particular surgery. All for half a page of prose, but I wanted a realistic portrayal. It was fun.

The process of writing, and the writing itself, must be entertaining to me, with the constraint that it will be entertaining to others, which pleases me. I think if I cannot even entertain myself, I won't entertain anybody else.

It cannot be something I worry whether I have the skill to finish, or worry whether it will be any good when I do. I have no aspirations or illusion of winning a Pulitzer, I am happy to tell a good story.

Answer 6

I think this comes down to how you write. I'm what one might call a method writer, so if I'm not feeling the emotions of my characters, I don't know where they are mentally and emotionally, so I can't get them written right in that scene.

For me, 'writing scared' could mean just that. But I think you mean more writing about the things that terrify us. And that too has value.

Look. Things are never as simple as yes and no. Should you keep pushing yourself? Yes. Should you push yourself to talk about a trauma that has you swimming in wave after wave of panic attack? No, that's just not healthy. Not unless you're trying to desensitize yourself, but even then I'd argue you should talk to a therapist first to make sure you aren't doing more harm than good.

I've done it, though. Because my writing is my therapy, so I've written about all the things that bother me, all the things that scare me, all the things that have hurt me. And let me tell you, it brought me to, and saved me from, some dark places.

The advantage? Well, I write fiction, and my characters live and breathe to an extent that people have read and re-read works of mine that are over 500K words. To be able to give your character that level of depth that they jump off the page and take your reader by the hand and take them along on an adventure is absolutely addictive for me to write.

I've written about depression, suicidal ideation, transgender issues, mental health issues, struggling with self-identity, the balance between what our family needs from us and what we need for ourselves, racism, homophobia, transphobia, existential crisis, women's issues, murder, mental and physical trauma, abuses (mental, physical, emotional, verbal, and social). And all of it within a tale that shows the reader how these things play out, not in a vacuum, but within the confines of a person's life.

But that is both a blessing and a curse, because few ever realise just how much of my soul I bare for them. And that level of vulnerability sometimes keeps me up at night. Be careful with that, because you need to function as a human being when you close the book.

Answer 7

What K. M. Weiland writes there is complete and utter nonsense.

1. Fear is a signal to avoid danger. Once the danger is past, fear will subside. If you experience lasting fear, that is pathological (e.g. an anxiety disorder).

2. Fear causes stress. Your body is put into a state of heightened alertness, so that you can face the threat to your life. If this stress lasts, the constant high level of strain to your organism can cause deseases from heart problems to cancer. You want to avoid that.

3. Fear is automatic, lower level cognitive processes (flight or fight), but it hampers higher level cognitive processes (e.g. rational thinking, idea generation, creativity).

4. Fear is the opposite of flow. Fear isn't fun.

5. You can push your comfort zone without becoming afraid.

Answer 8

It can be exhausting.

You can bang out a story line and move people around and have them 'do stuff' and still have time to take your dog for a walk. You can do that and the only cost to you is some time.

Or you can do some emotional strip mining and really plumb that scene.

What i find is that the more strong emotion I put into a scene, the more it wears me out. I'm invested in the characters, possibly unlike other writers here and there's no right or wrong to it. I feel my characters come from within my own life experience. The parent in the story is one aspect of my own parenting, and I pull on that. The child has fears, drawn from my own childish fears. The villain is destructive. I think we have all that stuff in us, and that's how we recognize it in stories. But to dig it up to make something authentic means pulling it up, turning it over, putting it into compelling words, constructing something. Doing more than floating along.

It can be cathartic.

Occasionally two characters, presumably two parts of my own experience, engage in dialog that goes somewhere I don't expect - and it hits me like a ton of bricks that what they are saying to each other ... is me talking to me, possibly me talking to the part of me that lives at the bottom of a dark pit, or the me that rallies every day to get the work done that needs to be done. Or whatever.

The two lines below got typed out mindlessly in the middle of a long dialog a few weeks ago, and as soon as they were staring at me they completely undid me. For reasons that won't be clear, but possibly you can relate to something within your own life.

"You did your best."

"It wasn't enough."

I haven't returned to that scene yet, because I think it will be emotional for me to work with it.

Should you write scared?

I'd say you need to know the cost to yourself of writing scared and it may be different at different times. I'd say push yourself as far as you can without it costing you too much.

Hemingway said writing is easy - you just sit at your typewriter and bleed. That might be useful for you to keep in mind.