This is great - I had to share this in a new post.
I've been contemplating my own fears about writing my first novel. From the coaching video, I wrote down the three things I most want, and that was one of them. So I took the video's advice and came up with a simple, immediate action item - get a book to instruct on how to approach a serious writing project, and how to keep it organized as you go. I've written many short stories, but a novel's a more complex beast.
Well, to keep it short - The greatest obstacle to me has been the fear of investing the time and effort into researching and writing a novel, only to have it not publish (or worse, have it publish, but remain in obscurity. I've always had this nagging feeling I'm supposed to be famous or something...)
Extremely in tune with this week's lesson, writer Dennis Lehane says this in the book's foreword:
"...I wrote the following on a piece of paper and taped above my desk: 'No one cares.' It sounds so cold. It looks so cold. But it wasn't meant that way, not entirely. What I was telling myself was that if I failed, no one would care. If I never published, no one would notice. If I never fulfilled my dream, it wouldn't make one bit of difference to anyone else on the planet. 'No one cares' meant no one was watching, no one was keeping score, no one was judging. I was free. Utterly...And that purified the writing process; it made it about the words and me. That's it--nothing else in the equation."
I am happy for you. What short stories have you written? I have an interest to check them out.