Facing the Fear

Great success may only be achieved through taking risks and it is often those that are the most terrifying that are the most rewarding. Everyone has their own personal fears, because everyone has their own personal goals.

What causes adrenalin to spread through my veins, causing my heart to start thumping in my chest and my palms to start sweating, is the thought of someone reading my creative writing and judging it. Why? Because it is what I love doing and to have someone tell me or even think that I have no aptitude for what I am most passionate about would be shattering. The dilemma is that I do not believe in simply writing for myself, I believe in writing to bring pleasure to others, to share my views and opinions and to assist in the understanding of a different perspective. Therefore I must constantly take the risk of allowing my work to be read and although I have yet to accomplish all my aims, I am definitely learning. Learning by opening my work up to the possibility criticism.

As a child the picnics I went on were far from conventional. They would still be in an idyllic location, on a warm summer’s day, but rather than entangling ourselves in the overgrown limbs of a tree or chasing the red ball that had inadvertently escaped from our grasp, my brother, our friends and I would pay intimate attention to the way the clouds passed by on their cyclical journey or the arc of a grasshopper as it leapt from one blade to another. We did this, not because of our fascination with clouds or grasshoppers, but because of our determination to best each other in the game known simply to us as ‘Keats’. At the age of eight I was unaware of the origins of the name of our game; I did not even know that Keats was a person let alone a poet. What Keats meant to me then and what I still associate with him, is a competition in the spontaneous composition of Odes, a pursuit the Romantic himself apparently enjoyed, and we as children emulated. The gift that these lazy afternoons bestowed upon me was not (unfortunately) a natural genius for poetry, but a perception of poetry as exciting, an escape from the trials of everyday life and the knowledge that what I wanted to do was create beauty out of the simplest of things.

My desires have since evolved and with the lost innocence of my childhood has come an increased awareness and pressure. An awareness of how intimate writing is, as it offers complete freedom in a world where very little seems to be under our own control. To have this power of creation and determination is very rare and therefore very revealing; so that when a critic reads my work they are not just judging it, they are judging me also. To me writing is infinitely enjoyable and interesting. Its personal nature ensures that the process of writing can never end, because as I change as a person, so do my views and perspectives as a writer. Part of the lure and beauty of writing is its permanence, but to have my thoughts suspended in time is a daunting prospect.

To write will always mean to risk rejection, but I believe that no matter what the reaction, this risk will always prove worthwhile. From each person who reads a literary work, something may be gained, whether it be the knowledge that you brought pleasure to another, or challenged their way of thinking, even a factor you had failed to take into account. The results of overcoming my fears and taking the risk of sharing my work with others have amounted to more than publication or admittance to the creative writing course at UEA: it has given me satisfaction and a greater understanding of myself.

So why not take the chance, put your fears to the test and see what you learn about yourself?

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