How stage fright helped my writing fears
I work with both speakers and writers. Everyone associates fear with speaking. Though the actual studies don’t really bear it out, everyone thinks public speaking is the number one fear, ranking ahead of death. (To be fair, several studies show it to be in the top five fears.)
Hardly anyone associates fear with writing. But, arguably, fear stops as many or more writers as it does speakers.
What kind of fear are we talking about?
Let’s focus on speakers first. They actually face three sorts of fears.
- Old-fashioned stage fright. In our ancestral, natural environment, if you stood in an open area in front of dozens of creatures, you were about to be eaten. Stage fright comes from adrenaline and cortisol (yes, medical folks, it involves much more. Let’s keep it simple, shall we?), and adrenaline and cortisol come from feeling threatened. Biologists call this the fight, flight, or freeze response, a survival mechanism.
- Fear of judgment. I think this differs enough from stage-fright to warrant a separate category. Although perhaps it stems from the same feeling of threat, it tends to express as a deeper discomfort—worry rather than panic. Stage fright strikes; fear of judgment simmers.
- Fear of the unknown. This often gets labeled as stage fright, but this fear comes simply from lack of familiarity with circumstances. Like fear of judgment, this fear tends to simmer rather than boil, though it swings up and down depending on how uncertain you feel.
Resolution and conversion
The biochemistry of all these may be similar, but the approach to resolving them differs.
- You don’t want to get rid of “stage fright.” You want to harness it. Adrenaline/cortisol is energy. It’s exactly the same as what you experienced when you were “up” for the big game in high school. Don’t get rid of it; use it. Channel it into your delivery. Just as stage fright can arise quickly, harnessing it can happen quickly.
- It’s harder to address fear of judgment. The long term solution involves continuing to care about your topic and your audience, but letting go of this outcome. The only reason to speak is to change the world, but you must learn to take responsibility for planting your seeds and letting the harvest come as it may. Obviously, this involves more long-term development of confidence in your skills.
- Make the unknown known. That means a) rehearse for familiarity so that you know your material, b) learn from experience what to expect when you face an audience, and c) do all the audience and situational analysis you can before speaking.
Writers face fears also
You may not recognize it as fear, but it works in similar ways for writers as for speakers.
- The parallel for stage fright is pitching or interviewing sources. This situation feels threatening, especially to beginning writers, and so it kicks in the adrenaline/cortisol cycle. Just like for speakers, the solution is to harness it, not rid yourself of it. If you find yourself feeling nothing in these situations, it just indicates you have stopped caring.
- Fear of judgment keeps writers from sending out queries and manuscripts or hitting the “publish” button. Just as with speaking, you learn to do the work and let go of the results. You can control your effort; you can’t control what an editor or an audience does. Confidence comes through longer spans of time as you grow in your skills.
- Make the process familiar. Figure out a writing routine. Get used to the feeling of sending proposals. Keep track of what you send out, and gain confidence in the process. Read market guides. Learn the editors or your audience. You can’t guarantee success, but you can get past uncertainty.
I’m not sure when I realized I had lost the fear of judgment and of the unknown that kept me from sending queries, but at some point I did. I followed a routine that I evolved over time. I never lost the adrenaline, and I never want to—it just means I care about my topic, my craft, and my audience, whether as a speaker or a writer.
I hope this breakdown helps you see how you can manage and even harness the fear that may have stopped you from sharing your expression with the world.
About the writer
Donn King is a speaker, writer, college professor and pastor. He blogs regularly at Thriving in Exile, a publication on practical Christianity to help cope with living in post-everything America.
