The Writing Process - Overcoming My Fear

Telling stories has always come easy to me. Fleshing out characters, describing locations, and providing details might seem daunting to some, but for me, it's as natural as breathing. My stumbling block in the entire writing process comes down to fear of ridicule. Throughout my life, I've always been teased. I was the brainy kid in school. I felt a lot of shame and disgrace from constant berating. My defense mechanism became writing and escaping to worlds that I created. The greatest challenge I face is the ability to overcome my fears of having my stories published for others to read.

I read action-adventure serials during my early teen years and soon became frustrated with their mundane style. Why couldn't I write my own book and do as well as they did? Wanting to emulate these series, which often had only a few protagonists, I opted for a whole team, each with their own individual talents and abilities. It felt more realistic to have a group of heroes, instead of one with unbelievable skills.

I began to create character files, keeping the typed pages in a folder for easy recall and to maintain continuity. It was the written equivalent of a sculptor building up a work of clay. Once the heroes were established, I wrote with newly found enthusiasm. The words began to pour onto the paper as smooth as the ink flowed from the pen. Days later, I had a stack of loose-leaf paper that made up the first five chapters. I was excited and proud. How many fifteen year olds were doing something like this? Most of the other teenagers I knew were doing typical things like dating, practicing to get their driver's licenses, or just getting into trouble in the neighborhood. I was doing what I loved.

I shared my story with my friends. A few teased me, but my best friend, Dave, didn't. He expressed the same desire and said that he was also thinking about writing his own story. I explained about character development and soon he was putting his ideas onto paper.

Over the next months, we shared our progress with each other, often critiquing and offering editing advice. Since we attended different schools, we would get together afterwards and exchange chapters we'd written. If a scene didn't feel right, or the dialogue was clumsy, we pointed it out. Nothing was off limits in our desire to see each other succeed.

What began as separate stories soon gave way to a merged process of our writing talents. Instead of two separate teams, we pooled our characters and wrote about one large group. By breaking down the book into smaller sections and assigning each other to write chapters, we progressed through the storytelling.

It was around that time when my family got a home computer. I began to transcribe our handwritten pages. There were many weekends when Dave would stay overnight so we could work on finishing our book. Hours on end we toiled into the nights, fueled with pots of coffee and cigarettes. Often, one of us would fall asleep; exhausted by the mental taxation we endured.

Through the years collaborating, we had our differences and there were a lot. While I retained the only physical copy of the printed draft like a protective parent holding a child, it angered Dave to the point where he worked on ideas for a second book. If I wouldn't give him the copy to hold, he would make his own. Our individually created principals would embark on their own mini-stories, with neither of us writing about the other's characters. He even chose the most apropos name for the book: "Divide And Conquer" and in retrospect, that's exactly what our writing did to each other.

In December, 1987, I started a new job and a few weeks later, I began dating a co-worker, Rose, whom I walked home on a snowy Christmas Eve. We went on our first date the next day. A month later, we went on a double date with another co-worker, who I set up with Dave. On Valentine's Day, Rose broke up with me and I found out afterwards that she had been seeing my friend, Dave. I was crushed, but more importantly, I felt betrayed.

I didn't want anything to do with him at that point. I stopped writing altogether. Even when they broke up a month later, I couldn't go back to it. The book was salt on the open wound. It was then that I decided to shelve the book completely. Maybe after time, I would return, but not then. It was the right thing to do.

We made our peace, but still drifted apart. In the summer of 1988, my family moved from Philadelphia to Cape May, NJ. We kept in contact, but it wasn't the same. Years passed and Dave battled his own demons with drugs and alcohol. In early 1993, I received a phone call from a mutual friend, telling me that he had committed suicide. I hadn't written any more of our story and didn't think it would be appropriate to do so at the time. The book sat on a shelf in my closet for the better part of two decades, only occasionally coming out when stumbling upon it, but quickly returned to its home on the shelf. I'd thought about re-writing it, since it was ungainly and antiquated, but I couldn't bring myself to change the only tangible work I had from Dave. I felt like I was taking away from my memories of him.

Since enrolling in classes at SNHU, I've learned some valuable lessons about writing and what I need to finish my novel, most important of which, is being confident. Having never shared my writing with any more than a few close friends, I've already submitted one story into a fiction competition. I'm no longer willing to be a prisoner of my own self-doubts. I can use Dave's writing as inspiration to complete my novel. Doing this for me will bring peace to my soul. I'm finishing what I set out to do by overcoming my personal fears and completing my novel so I can honor my friend's memory.