F.E.A.R – false evidence appearing real can be a very crippling thing; something most of us suffer from time to time. Fear can be debilitating that when left unchecked can rob us of our dream life.

But life doesn’t have to so limiting just because fear is present. We need to learn to harness our fear and to use it to spur us on to greater things. Writers, even very successful ones, fear that nobody will read their books. They worry that their books won’t sell. This can be all consuming; stifling their creative genius that helped make them a best selling author in the first place.

For some writers their fears overwhelm them to the point that they can’t even start to write. Here’s some tips on how to overcome fear so that as a writer you can start, become published and potentially make this passion your fulltime career.

What’s causing you anxiety? Are you writing a piece then revising it over and over again? The surest way not to publish is to continually try to perfect your writing. I learnt from my writing group what my writing was about – it was to entertain people NOT win a Nobel prize. I’m glad I started!

Acknowledge your fear

Just say ‘yes’ I have a fear. Don’t pretend it’s not there and it’ll go away. It’ll come back to bite you if you don’t harness it. Now that you know it’s real, let’s deal with it.

The process leads to the results.

You know there you want to be; so how do you get there? You need a plan. There is a process you go through to leave your house and drive to the shops. The same process thought applies here. You want to be a published author, then you need to write some words, put it into a book and get it published either traditionally or digitally. A lot of people fear the traditional route. I certainly did so I took the digital track and uploaded onto Amazon Kindle. Fourteen books in 7 months later – it’s been easy.

Play to your strengths

If your fear is that you feel you can’t write a 300 page book but short stories of 5000 – 10,000 words is a walk in the park, then become a short story novella writer and start earning today. This has been my tact as I’m not comfortable with writing long stories. Instead of remaining fear struck, I used my strength of writing smaller pieces to get published. My audience has loved them; many hitting top 10 in category on Amazon.

Build a support team

Nothing feeds fear like taking on something new and having to do it all by yourself. It’s lonely out there. New writers don’t have support structures around them to keep them motivated or to overcome bumps in the road when things go wrong.  New authors also don’t have a tool kit of where to get covers done, how to format a book digitally, do promotions or how to improve their plotting, outlining or writing in general

I found that by joining a writing group I could overcome most of my fears because I was surrounded by like minded writers. We could be great support for each other plus share a wealth of knowledge that would take me years to discover. The group, www.writingkindlebooks.com has been the best thing I’ve done.

If you adopt these suggestions, you to can harness your fears right now that are crippling your writing journey and live a more exciting and rewarding life. The world is waiting for your story. Please publish it today!

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