My Ivory Tower

My name is Karin Huxman and I write romance for New Concepts Publishing. You can find my author page at http://newconceptspublishing.com/karinhuxmanbooks.html. I write a mix of time travel, contemporary, paranormal, and sf/fantasy and love every minute of it.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

On fear ...

When I first started out as a writer, with the intent to finish and publish books, I felt exhilaration, excitement, a small measure of anxiety, but I scoffed at others who talked about fear. With the first book I ever sold, VIRTUAL HEART, going out of print and not having sold a new romance in over a year, fear is finally catching up with me.

It’s the fear that the three book series I’m working on will never sell. The middle grade children’s novel I’ve been submitting will never be enjoyed by the intended audience. Fear that the spark of exhilaration and joy when I sit down to write may be gone for good, not just gone for a little while.

I think writing should be joyous, it should be exciting. Writers should approach the page with equal amounts trepidation and delight. But too many times fear holds us hostage. So how am I handling this fear? Well, I’m still writing every day. I’m still committed to finishing the book that I started. I’m looking forward to finally writing that vampire mystery that’s been brewing in the back of my head for a couple of years. And I search for joy and try to find ways to push away the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that says I’m a “has been” even though I’ve never even been a best seller.

Being a creative person, I live with both ego and the fear that I’m just not good enough every day. I’m working to dilute that fear by writing from the heart. Writing stories I want to tell whether or not anyone wants to read them. The process, I tell myself, is the important part of the journey. Who am I kidding? I want my work to sell bunches so I can send my husband on the hunt of his life and we can finally go on that cruise to Tahiti. I’m afraid that my chance has passed me by but I’m stubborn and not a little rebellious. So I keep writing. The story has to come out one way or another, it’s what I do.

What do you do to conquer the fear that crops up in your creative life? Ignore it? Confront it? Whine about it? Please share with us. Oh, and go to the New Concepts Publishing site and take a chance on buying VIRTUAL HEART at a huge sale price. Last chance, you know.