I’ve thought of writing a book fairly often but if I let the idea sit, I find that one or two months later I no longer like it. I’ve had a concept for a book that has been gestating in my mind for a while now and after one year, I still like it. That’s a new feeling.

“You HAVE to write a book,” one of my friends said to me last week. Funny enough, three other people did, too. (Are you conspiring with each other again?)

I like the idea of writing a book and spending a large chunk of time on one topic, testing my skills in this new arena. The problem? That old friend– the fear of failure.

The what-if’s start haunting me even before I’ve put the concept to the page. What if it sucks? What if no one buys it? What if I find out I have no talent? Worse, what if others find out I have no talent?

This isn’t simply an unfounded fear. I did sit down and start writing this book, but the feat of making it a best-selling book, the defining piece of my life was so massive that everything I wrote was unfunny and uninspired– the absolute opposite of what I have envisioned this book to be.

By putting that pressure of “my first and defining book” on this project, I’ve lost the battle even before I’ve picked up my weapons.

I think as freelancers, as journalists, as people really, the fear of what others will think never really does leave us. Every time I think I’ve reached that point where other people’s comments won’t sting, someone attacks me, and I find that they do.

Why try something new when you’re doing well with what you’ve already got? Why take up that new road, that new path that brings with it those same old challenges and fears all over again?

I used to think that reaching some measure of success would cure me magically of these fears. Partly, it did. Of course I’m more confident now because I’ve proved to myself that I was able to do it. And if I could do it once, I could do it again. I’m no longer insecure. But that doesn’t mean I no longer fear that I could suck, and suck massively, in what I decide to do next.

Even now, when I sometimes sit down to write, I think, this is it. My time is up, the jig is over. This time I’m going to fail massively, and they’re going to find out what a fraud I am. But I’m not a fraud. Because all those hundreds of thousands of words, good or bad, made sure that I can write. Maybe not excellent stuff all the time, but I can get it done. The logical part of me gets it, the emotional part of me doesn’t.

There has always been more where than came from. And what is harder to learn and accept, is that there always will be. The foundation is laid and made stronger each time I sit down to write and produce something.

Initially, there is the fear of failing at what we’ve set out to do, the fear of not succeeding in the lofty goals we set for ourselves, the fear of never getting accepted, of not doing it right, of not finding our truth. Some of the lucky ones, by sheer persistence, luck and good fortune, make it.

And then comes the fear of losing it all.

If I take out the income part of it and know that I could survive for a while, still, the idea of not publishing something for a while makes me deeply uncomfortable. There’s something very terrifying about the idea of becoming a has-been.

As much as I hate to admit it, it’s about the ego. It’s about what others think of you, and how they may think you’re a talentless hack if you don’t measure up to their standards of what a good journalist or good writer is supposed to do.

I’m trying to detach myself from other people’s expectations. I’m trying, this year, before I embark on my book project, to detach myself from the publication and focus instead on the work. To write a book because I enjoy the process of it, and let the chips fall where they may. To feel the love and the joy of that creation, rather than be wrapped up around the expectation of what others will make of it.

That’s not to say that I won’t market the hell out of it, because of course I will. That’s not to say that I won’t rewrite it or rework it if an agent or editor asks that I do. I’m still a professional and I do, after all, want my work to succeed in the market, both critically and financially. But that part comes later. The first part has to be about me. I have to be happy about my work before I care about whether someone else is happy about it.

I should know what I want to achieve with it before another professional tells me what I should want to achieve with it.

I think it is important to publish in some of the known publications, because like it or not, it gets people to take you more seriously, it gives you a bigger platform for your work, and then, of course, there is that little ego thing that isn’t all bad. There’s no denying that it takes a certain level of competence to be published in certain publications, so why not celebrate that? But it’s probably not the best idea to become dependent or too attached to it.

I was taught never to fail, and because there’s a lot about book publishing that’s not in the author’s hands, once it goes out into the world, there’s a chance it could tank big time (even saying that makes me cringe!)

I know the answer is in the acceptance that you can only put in your best effort and let others make of it what they will. If it blows, it blows, but the fear of it blowing can’t allow me to chicken out of doing what I really want to do. I can’t let it paralyze me into writing timid words that I don’t believe in.

My motivations for the book aren’t fueled by money, though I don’t want to completely be ripped apart by the feedback either. I want to remain true to myself, but I do want to write for the market as well.

The time is finally ripe for me to write the first three chapters and get a proposal in the works. I’ve been avoiding it for a while, but I guess now that I’m done with the wedding and have a supportive husband who doesn’t mind cooking dinner five nights in a row, this will have to be my next big project.

“The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook – the gilt-framed portrait of the book – right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real life flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear.”  – Bonnie Friedman