♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦
Topic #135
What is your biggest fear? What random and
innocuous thing makes your skin crawl?
Welcome back to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop! If you’re new to the series, the authors included are grateful for your reads and appreciate, even more so, when you share our writings with your friends. If you’re new to the series, welcome aboard. The authors engage and impress weekly. Be prepared to become a regular reader.
I’ve faced some heavy obstacles in my life. No stranger to hardship, I made a choice to not fear. In my mind, I figured, if the powers that be were testing me, or abusing me, then removing any tools for them to use would keep me safe. Like buddhist monks, I learned to both control my emotions and come to terms with them as they manifested.
Fear is a difficult emotion to overcome. It is a safety mechanism from our earliest days. Overriding the hard wiring of the brain takes stone will. Having stone will was another goal of mine in the face of my struggles. To overcome any obstacle, to not shy away, to continue on the path you’ve chosen for yourself, you must have stone will.
My answer to the question isn’t going to be the most typical. Certainly it is something that should be a bit obvious. Undoubtedly the root reason will be a more obscure.
My greatest fear at this point in my life is that I will lose the ability to publish my work. It isn’t a lack of sales, or anonymity. It isn’t even a lack of ideas to write. I’m blessed to have already written six beautiful books, which will all be published (or so I think) by the end of 2020. That is my goal, anyway. Finding and affording editors, proofers, and covers will move those dates around a bit, as the process always does.
Between now and then, after then, I will be afraid that the platform that has allowed me to publish could dissolve. It has happened before, with the closing of Booktrope, and therefore I know that possibility lies in wait. One might say, that with my concern for something having power over my fate, or my worry that fear produces such experiences, I should not mention it. Sometimes, speaking the word removes the power. After all, there are so many ways to be sure your work as an author gets out.
In reality, the fear is having to go through figuring out my outlet all over again. It is such a difficult path to forge without help, without information, with few resources… Could I? Should I? Would I? I cannot say. One too many blows to the heart will make a person shy. I’m already shy. Another strike that hard, that would be a killing blow, I’d wager. That would probably put an end to my writing—not because I don’t love it, or no longer would want to write. The difficulty and suffering cannot be sustained, and either adversity ebbs, or we do.
To me, that’s a very scary, skin crawly place to be.
Let’s see what fears the other authors have to tell us about…
