What If You're Scared: Of Writing

Hello friends!

In previous installments in this series exploring what if you're scared of querying and promoting your book, I thought we'd go back to basics and talk about what if you're scared of even writing the book in the first place. Because you don't get to be afraid of querying or promoting if you don't write the book (which, it turns out, is a great away to avoid everything tbh!!!!!!!). Ask me how I know.

I've been telling the story of how I became an agent for going on 20 years, and I think I have been telling it wrong. Or, I think I learned something new about myself in that telling. I started out at the University Press of Florida, where I was an intern and then an editorial assistant after undergrad. That part is true. It's also true that I started reading Publishers Lunch back then, IN THE NINETIES, where I learned what agents were, and decided to be one. Before came to New York, I went to grad school for my MA in Fiction writing at the University of Southern Mississippi, and this is where I'm starting to think the story I've been telling diverges from the story that is true.

As I tell it, I say I graduated early (true: wrote my thesis and everything) because I wanted to be a grown up with a real job and not a student anymore. At face value, that is true. I was frustrated in workshops because I was the one who kept saying who's going to buy this novel? what are you going to do when we graduate and have to get jobs? I see now that I was exercising my own anxieties instead of focusing on craft. But I couldn't see that then, so I...ran away. I finished my coursework, wrote and defended my thesis, packed my car and drove to New York City and the rest is history.

But maybe, there was something else going on there, and not just my anxiety about my future employment. Maybe, just maybe, I was also scared of the writing. I mean, I did it. I fulfilled all my assignments. I wrote a whole thesis of stories and essays. There's probably stuff I wrote that I've forgotten all about, tucked away in a box somewhere. But I'm beginning to think, at the ripe old age of 46, that 23 year old Kate was afraid to look writing in the face and sit down and do it outside of when a teacher made me, so instead she focused on career and took an off ramp to adulthood.

Because writing is scary. It's you, in part, on the page, vulnerable and exposed. When you share it with others, you are asking them do you like it? do you like me? Many of us cannot separate ourselves from our writing, our value, our worth, without lots and lots and lots of practice. (Congratulations to those of you who are rushing to the comments to say NOT ME! I have a healthy relationship with my writing and self-worth!!! You get a gold star for today.) I can honestly say, after decades of writing, that I have more objective distance between what I write and my self-worth now but I sure as hell did not in my twenties. I do not believe I AM my writing. When it is bad, I am still good. But it still stings to be rejected, and likely will forever.

Being afraid to write, whether that's because you can't stomach being vulnerable, are afraid of rejection, are adverse to attention, or fear repercussions of what you might write, just plain sucks. It gives others control of your life, your creativity, sometimes your livelihood. It can make you cower. It creates conflict between what you want to do and what you feel like you're allowed to do. Sometimes it's hard to write because we feel like we can't take that time away from our other obligations in life–family, job, caretaking, etc. All of this sucks and isn't fair and I hate it. But I've let that fear control my own writing and now, with the benefit of time, I can see how bullshit it was to do so. Not writing didn't protect me. It erased me.

I can't go back to 23 and stay that extra semester in my masters program and make past-Kate sit down and write with all her copious (job- and family- and responsibility-free) time. (Godddddd she had so much free time!!!!!) I can't sit here and regret all the time I wasted, because I didn't waste it, I just chose to use it differently, and that's what got me here, to this wonderful career, and writing this newsletter, and even my first book deal. But I can look at that fear objectively, and say oh, past-Kate, I see you now. Yeah, that was stressful. You did the best you could. And I can take that empathy and compassion for myself and go write whatever the heck I want! Who cares?! No one has me under a microscope. People are concerned with their own lives, not mine. Whatever I write next might not get published, which is true for everyone all the time no matter what, so I might as well have fun with whatever I chose to do next! What's the worst that could happen?

The worst that could happen is that I never sell another book of my own writing and like I said, that's true for everyone all the time no matter what. I don't want that to happen, but I really only have so much control over it. Yes, even me, an agent with all this experience, with an agent of her own. I cannot force anyone to give me a book deal, for me or my clients. No one is giving me one because I'm nice and I'm their friend and they want to do me a solid. Book deals are business transactions, not some backstage pass for groupies. I could let fear continue to control my creative life, but uh, that didn't work so great for past-Kate, who spent the years 2003-2011 not writing much of anything. I regret that. I wish I had been brave enough to try writing more, without worrying who will like this? will I sell it? will it be a novel one day? I could have just had fun all those years. Writing isn't always fun, but it can be somewhat fun, and that's better than nothing.

Someone will reject your work. Someone will not like it and write a bad review online. Someone will decline to be your agent. Someone will look at you askance and think who does she think she is? Someone will begrudge you your success. You cannot control other people. No one is waiting for your novel. No one is tapping their foot thinking hurry up already! unless you are George R.R. Martin. These things other people might think of your writing life and they are none of your business. If you spend all your time worrying what other people will think, well, then you will spend all your time doing that, and not writing. We are not invulnerable. If you cut us, we will bleed. But the wounds are rarely mortal.

Please go and write whatever the hell you want. It might not get published. That's ok. An agent or editor or your best friend might not like it and that's ok, too. They don't have to like it. Only you do. Your self-worth does not rest on becoming a published author, though that might be one of your life's goals. It is so much better to write the book you want to read than to write the book you think some agent or editor wants to read. Don't be afraid to write the next sentence. Or the one after that. Or the one after that. I know it's easy to just say don't be afraid. I can't sprinkle fairy dust and take away that fear. But the act of writing, one sentence after does that. And it's the only way.

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XOXOXOXOX,

Kate

Who am I and what is this? This is Agents & Books, a twice-weekly newsletter about writing, publishing, and the creative life. I've been an agent for almost 20 years, most of it at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency, and I'm the author of soon to be two books: Write Through It: An Insider's Guide to Publishing and the Creative Life (Simon Element, 2025) and a picture book called Pay Attention to Me!, with illustrations by Rob Justus (Sourcebooks, 2026). If you haven't already, become a subscriber today. $5 a month or $50 a year. Same price since 2019!