Zestful Blog Post #160
You must not fear death.
That sentence was cut from my book You’ve Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your
Dreams. My editor at Writer’s Digest Books made the cut; I suppose he
thought it was over the top. It occurred in a chapter about writing freely and
giving yourself permission to write poorly in order to get to the good stuff. Although
I noticed the cut I didn’t object, because that piece of advice really needed a
chunk of explanation, which I hadn’t put in, because I sensed it could have interrupted
the flow of the chapter too much.
Of course fear generally is a toxic emotion. I don’t know of
anyone who has ever said fear helped them achieve anything. Caution yes,
intelligence yes. You don’t jump over a balcony instead of taking the stairs
because you’re afraid; it’s because you know you’ll wake up in the ICU or the
morgue.
When I counsel writers to be fearless, the counsel goes way
beyond the practice of writing.
The fear of annihilation—death—is the chiefest of all human
fears, and it of course drives much bad behavior. If I annihilate you first,
maybe that will delay my own annihilation. But if we face life accepting that
death will come sooner or later and go—OK, so what?—then we are truly free, and
whatever we create will reflect that.
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