Sage Bray Varon

We all have fears. They range from small anxieties to creeping dread to outright terror. For most of us, fear is an internal or societal anticipation of a variety of possible disappointments. They aren’t life threatening but they can be, to some degree, debilitating.

Fear of failure is one of the more common anxieties among creatives. But that failure we fear is not the same for everyone. There are so many manifestations of it—fear of others seeing our ineptitudes, fear of being forever branded by our failings, fear of failing to manifest the wondrous thing in our heads we want to create, fear of not finishing, fear of finishing to find we have failed, fear of failing to be good enough in the eyes of those we want to impress, and the fear of failing to create at all.

Not only do we wrestle with such fears, but we also often admonish ourselves for having them. We call ourselves stupid, cowardly, wimpy, hopeless, and, well, a failure for being afraid. So, we have fear compounded by self-reproach. How do we manage to get anything out into the world when faced with such strong internal roadblocks?

Those who do get work out, work through it. It’s not easy when it drains our motivation and clouds our purpose, but it is marvelous when we get to the other side and manifest our creativity. How you work through your fears and anxieties when they rear their ugliness will be particular to you and your version of fear, but I have found three main approaches that I think can allow most people to work past or with their fears:

• You rebel against the fear and do it anyway. Fear or not, you do the work, you create, you get up everyday and make your creativity a necessity like food and shelter. You head out into that forest of the unknown, like a hunter, like an explorer, and you do what you do regardless of the dangers. You do not ask “what will happen to me?” You just go and find out, ignoring all doubt, shoving it aside, burying it, locking it in a box, turning away again and again as the fear tries to grab your attention.

 

• You focus on the journey. Creative fears are primarily about end results. This is why, for many people, finishing has so much anxiety attached to it. But if you work to enjoy the creative time, to explore and discover, to hone your skills, and to get lost in the magic of it, then you don’t worry so much about the end result. Enjoy the journey and if you create something amazing along the way, then you have a way to share that journey with others. And if you don’t have a worthwhile result? Well, you’ve lost nothing as you have your experiences, your increased skill, and the space to journey again.

 

• You use the fear as fuel. Grab those emotions, those tremors, those visions of doom and gloom and incorporate them into what you make. It’s both a therapy and an honest mode of self-expression. Art is often about being vulnerable, about showing bits of yourself to the world in order to communicate thoughts and views. Fear blossoms in the core of our vulnerability so instead of letting it control you, use it. Fear is also one of the most common experiences we have with other human beings, especially those ubiquitous fears that we are not good enough, so if you want your work to connect with others, explore your fear and share that exploration.

 

September Prompt

What is your greatest fear as a creative? It might take some journaling or long talks with your significant other, bestie, or another creative, but dig down and define that fear or dread or anxiety as best you can. Then start to explore it creatively.

Ask yourself:

• What colors are in your fear, what textures, what scents and flavors?
• What visual or narrative forms does it take in your dreams/nightmares?
• What temperature is it? What sounds does it make?
• What or who does it look like?
• What specific words, places, or objects do you associate with your fear?

Write, sketch, or create a collage of the answers you come up with then use those answers to create exploratory. Perhaps you can write a fairytale about your fear or create a series of quick pieces that tell a story about it. Or write or create ideas and concepts that are an antithesis to your fear or are about you imagining yourself or your process if you conquered them. You can also make your fears something you can confront. Imagine looking them in the eye and asking what they’re doing here or invite them to sit down for tea and try to understand them.

After you feel like you really know the fear you’re exploring, manifest it in your medium. Use what you’ve discovered in your journaling, conversations, and explorations to create wonderful intense expressions of the characteristics of your fear or the alternate experiences you’d have without it.

You can spend time daily for the whole month exploring your fears or you could do all your exploration in half an hour then get to work. Give yourself a couple options, a day or range of days to start on this prompt, and a deadline. Fears hate deadlines but they are also often quite obedient to them because, ironically, they get knocked out by another fear — that of not meeting the deadline.

Exploring our fears is not always easy but it can be tremendously freeing and gratifying to do so not to mention that the more you know and understand your fears the less power they have over you.

I hope to have time to do this exploration myself. My intention is to try to do these prompts with you. I do have a tremendously full month, being out of town for the first half, but I’m hoping to maybe get a short story going around my own creative fears. Let’s see if I can make that happen. Can you get the prompt done as well?

 

Looking Back at the August Prompt

I do know that quite a number of readers worked on last month’s prompt of “home not home” but I’m only aware of the professed journaling, sketching, and conversations. If any of you have finished work and you would like to share with me, you can respond to these emails (if you get this by email) or write me here. Planning on sharing with me can help push you to do it!

For my email followers, I’ve included one of the two poems I wrote last month based on the August prompt of “home not home”. You’ll find it below the body of this post. I also share to keep accountable (thank you for helping me with that!) as well as encourage you.

(If you aren’t signed up to receive these by email, you can do so at the top of This Creative Habit’s blog page here. I’ll keep my works in progress in the emailed posts in order to leave open the option of submitting them for publication where public sharing makes them ineligible. So please do not share these publically. Thank you!) 

 

[Photo by Bhargava Marripati]