You left out one -- the fear of being good... but not good enough. Of always being the person with unrealized potential.

Timely post, and good stuff to gnaw on, especially given that my current project specifically deals with how running from your fears can destroy everything.

* I am afraid I am wasting my time.

Pretty much sums it up for me as I Keep Writing!

Excellent points Scott!

I would add that acknowledging a fear as just one of many thoughts that occur in your mind, does the opposite of taking you to a more intensely emotional place. It liberates you from the overwhelming sense of the fear being in charge.

Sure it can be useful to mine your own emotional archive for material, but I'm not sure that's what you want to do when you need to, as you say, "hear your creativity."

There are numerous good resources on the web for mindfulness exercises. These are often designed to help people suffering from depression or OCD to see their own thought processes from a less overwhelming perspective, but they're equally useful for creative people crippled by fear.

Approaching the fear rather than trying to block it or run away from it, is the first step to defusing it.

@Raving Dave Herman: Good point. By 'naming' it, you can start a process whereby you may 'control' it.

I also suppose we can toss some Martin Buber into the mix:

* When what we fear is this strange mysterious force we try to avoid, we experience that as an I-It relationship.

* When we engage our fear directly, we in effect 'demythologize' it, allowing us to have a more authentic I-You connection to it.

I'm glad I found this place. It's nice to know that there's a friendly voice for when I reach each fear!

What I fear most? Success. I'm working to on it!

Reverse psychology is always a good technique. Give voice to the naysayers in your head with "I bet you can't do it (finish it, make it funny, etc.)" And then go ahead and prove them wrong!

@Luzid--exactly! The fear of being good but just not quite there. Which to me is not the same as the fear of success (I've had that and I LIKE it).

Another fear related to that one. The fear that every naysayer in my life is right. That as I cling to my writing dreams, pushing myself, I will someday find they were right all along and I should have stuck to what everyone said I should be or do.

Big on the demythologizing bit.

The thing is... all your fears ARE actually accurate. They WILL laugh at you. At times, you WILL suck. Your stories WILL ring hollow. You could very well be wasting your time and never sell anything and never find an agent.

So there you go.

For me, once I've found peace with all those possibilities, I find myself ready to go to work. For all those things really have nothing to do with the 'ass in the chair' work aspect.

And dammit... even if that laundry list of terrors come to pass? It's still good work.

So go do good work.

Brother, I hear and feel your words. Amen to them!