Happy Halloween, and poets on fear

Happy Halloween! A bit early. I already have candy by the door, which is a bit optimistic since I live in a condo-y-apartment-y building which probably won’t have trick or treaters.

I am the kind of person who sprains her own jaw during her move, from stress. I had ulcers when I was a pre-teen. If I was a horse, you might call me “High spirited,” but as a human, I think I might be termed “high strung.” I will be nervous and out-of-sorts til I can find my books, my clothes, the everydaythings that are still hiding in boxes, I’m afraid.

I thought I would talk a little bit about fear, since it’s almost Halloween, what fear means for writers. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of writer’s block. What are your worst writerly fears? I think I fear failure the most, and that turns out to be a very motivating fear – you don’t want to fail for lack of trying, I suppose? I’d rather fail while trying hard than fail while trying not-at-all. So out go the little stacks of poems, the manuscripts, the job applications, the e-mails asking for readings. I admit that when I read the back of Poets & Writers, and see all the people who have won things (mostly not me, sadly, or my friends) it sometimes makes me feel discouraged. I get that grumpy “poetry-is-an-insider’s-business” feeling. I admit that when I get a bunch of rejections, I feel sometimes that I’ve chosen a stupid path. When I was working as a technical writer, way back when, I decided to try to “be a writer” – aka, go to graduate school, really spend time writing, reading, and submitting, write and try to publish a poetry book, for the first time in my life. That was a scary moment, but it would have been scarier to say – well, my mother, grand-mother, and great-grandmother (and great-great grandmother, as a matter of fact, who was the postmistress of her town because she was the only one who could read) all wanted to be writers, and didn’t do it, and I’m going to be just like them. I wanted to fulfill a dream that I feel like has been in my family unfulfilled for generations. Hrmph. Not sure if I’m living the dream, yet, but at least I will be able to say that I gave it my best shot, that I didn’t let fear (of failure, of debt, of poverty, of rejection) get the best of me. What’s that expression? Fail more, fail better?