On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.
In a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog, novelist Lisa Janice Cohen shared thought-provoking insights about hope and fear. Here’s an excerpt from that post:
I recently watched a documentary about Molly Kawahata, a young climate activist who is also an ice climber. It’s called The Scale of Hope. As she talked about the challenge of climbing a steep ice wall in Alaska, it felt as if she were talking to me about writing a novel. One of the things she says in the documentary is this:
“You don’t try to climb something that’s literally impossible. You have to know that you could get to the top.”
That’s hope. And yet, her time on the ice is always tempered by fear, by the knowledge that failure is a possible outcome.
Those of us who write are scaling mountains of a different kind. Writing, like climbing, has its own technical skills and to persevere is to believe you can get to the top.
Kawahata brings that same sensibility to her work as a climate activist. And even more challenging is her personal history of living with a mental illness. She is very frank about her own mind being both her antagonist and her protagonist.
Regardless of our specific neurochemistry and limitations, we all bring our full selves to the table in the act of creation. The only way to get to the top of that particular mountain is to first know that it’s possible.
There is one additional aspect to Kawahata’s climbing experience: preparation. As writers, our preparation includes craft and community, research and practice. We would not even attempt to climb without having the right gear, the appropriate training, backup, and knowledge. Communities like Writer Unboxed, conferences, craft books, writing groups, and beta readers are some of our essential tools. However, all the preparation in the world can’t eliminate the fear; it only gives us the resources to draw upon when the work challenges us.
The mountain we set out to climb when we begin a novel isn’t a sheer cliff of ice, but it’s just as slippery and difficult to maintain traction and balance. At any given point, we are looking up to see how much of the face we have left to climb and looking down to see how far we’ve come. It’s all too easy to let fear leave us clinging to the ice, unable to move. But, if we rely on our preparation and equipment, understand that fear is necessary, we can set our toeholds and keep climbing one sentence, one word at a time.
Reach higher. I believe in myself and I believe in you.
What are you climbing?
What fears do you face?
How do you harness your joy to keep moving through the fear?
Source: Writer Unboxed