Perhaps you’re familiar with the sensation. You sit down to write, your story a brilliant movie playing in your head, but the blank page in front of you sends a sickening throb of fear through your chest.

What if the words come out wrong?

What if you can’t make the story on paper as glorious as the one in your head?

What if you fail?

And so you sit, paralyzed by fear. You check email. You post on Instagram. You decide your toilet really does need to be cleaned right. this. second.

You do anything but write.

Fear can be useful. It can motivate us to work hard. To revise and edit and get a second opinion before revising once more. It can drive us to the limits of our craft in a mad effort to do better on this story than we’ve ever done before.

But fear can also…