Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Fear of Success

Strange.

This is really strange. I mean, writing my first blog post. I’m sitting on a bright platform with a microphone and a recorder. All I can see in front of me is darkness. There may or may not be any audience in the darkness, studying me with great interests or contempt. Or there might be a dog---I’m not talking about you. This is my first blog post, as a writer, and this is how I feel.

So what am I going to talk about, today and in the future? No, I’m not going to start bragging about my book. You can check the other pages if you are interested (by the way, exactly what drove you here to hear me rambling, I have no clue of). I’m going to talk about everything, anything. That’s what a writer does. Fiction writing is probably the only profession in the world for which holding an advanced degree (in Creative Writing) is considered far from adequate. What do writers do? They build worlds, create people, predict how things should happen and comment on how things should have happened. They are playing God! How dare we write about life, assuming we understand life?

Of course, we can always write about ourselves (by the way, how dare we claim that we understand ourselves?). In fact, this is almost inevitable. We either write what we have, what we are, or what we lack, what we aren’t. Either way, we define ourselves through writing imaginary people and imaginary events. It takes courage to expose; it takes pain to hide.

Now, you may say, standing up from the darkness in front of me, “Wait a minute! Could you first explain what the title of the blog means?” Here is my answer:

1. The Taranis Spirit is a motorcycle made in Thyphol, an imaginary place located on Planet RB-2 in the Renaisun Quadruple Star System. This type of motorcycle has adaptive wheels for riding on hills. Don't ask me any more details for I don't know.
2. The Taranis Spirit is either a fancy warship or a military maneuver. I haven’t decided on it and I wouldn’t tell you even if I have.
3. The Taranis Spirit is the tentative name of my novel-in-progress, the sequel of The Starlight Fortress. See, I still can’t avoid talking about my book, as what a writer normally does.

Okay, if by far you still haven’t left, I know you really like me. Personally! And that deserves some reward. So I’ll offer an advice on writing. They may help you, or they may destroy you. Depends on how you use them.

Don’t do what everybody else is doing. Why? Because, for some reason, in the modern world, whatever profession or activity you could think of, there are many people doing it right now. There are many people writing books. Many making movies. Many applying for industrial jobs, research grants … A common critique I hear about my book is that things happen too fast compared with most of the books in the market. Every scene has drama in it. I could have added a lot more stuff in between to slow it down, to split it to several books. Well, this is not a wrong advice. The only thing is, if I do so my book will end up looking similar to many other books. Why would I want that? How could one expect his work to stand out, to bear unique comments, if he’s doing what everybody else is doing? 

Which is the major cause for people not achieving what they want to achieve, fear of failure, or fear of success?