God Hates a Coward
When folks ask me about freelancing, I’m never sure where the line between being helpful and being self-aggrandizing might lie. If I wax too much about my meager successes, I sound arrogant. If I keep a bunch back, I’m not being helpful at all. The conversation almost always begins with a question, something in the same species as “How do you write at your pace?” or “What’s your secret?” or some other such thing, Let’s clarify. Compare the time I’ve been in the business with other, better known writers and game designers. I’m still new at this, still wet behind the ears. Yet in the eight years or so I’ve been pounding on keyboards, I’ve written a couple of million words, developed a mountain more, and have my name in more books and web articles than I want to talk about. So, when someone asks me how I manage the word count, how I keep coming back to the desk day after day, I’m reluctant to give the answer I know to be true: Fear.
Terror is the teat on which I suckle to sustain my pace. Fear is what gets me up at stupid o’clock, what has me rooting around in my little attic for discard ideas, and what keeps me parked in front of the desk when fatigue and distraction stomp around my office. It’s not at all healthy, I realize, but it’s the fortune in my cookie, the secret ingredient to my special sauce.
What am I afraid of? Failure, disappointment, impotence, selling hamburgers. There’s little room for error in this business. Two weeks late on a project? I promise you’ll find it easier to part the Mississippi River than it will be to find more work with the client you screwed. Pull a prima donna act about the sanctity of your work and you’ll discover there are a dozen humbler writers behind you that will be happy to take your place. Fear keeps me respectful of my editors and developers and fellow writers. It ensures that I pick the right battles to fight and to judge the damage before committing to a conflict I can’t win. I don’t burn bridges. I hit my deadlines with the best possible work I can produce each and every time.
Fear is useful so long as it remains in the background. If it’s only whispering in my ear and doesn’t shout, I’m good. Fear, however, doesn’t stay quiet for long. Three weeks into a project when it’s due on the fourth, fear polymorphs into panic. That’s when everything stops and my determination sputters out. The few projects where panic set in led to long agonizing hours where nothing can work. I write 5,000 words and then delete 6,000. I can’t bull through it and no amount of beer, candy, or blistering death metal can break its hold. It’s only when I murder the panic that I manage to finish. I’ve survived them, but the project (and my body) wind up suffering.
The trick, then, is using fear to keep the words flowing fast enough to keep panic from killing the manuscript. Assume I have four weeks to generate 45,000 words. I’m happy and terrified during the first three weeks. If I still haven’t finished the raw writing when week four opens, panic sets in and things start unraveling. To avoid this, I do my best to make sure I have everything more or less done by the end of the third week. The last week I use for polishing, boozing, and recharging my batteries for the next project sliding down the pipe. Through it all, fear is there, but it’s manageable provided I know I’m ahead of schedule. Any delay, any puttering around with other nonsense, panic’s looming shadow falls across the desk, forcing me to cast about to overcome it, usually by sacrificing gym, games, sleep, marriage, and so on.
This, friends, is the game I play. It’s how I work. It’s not at all healthy and I would recommend it to no one. What’s the takeaway then? Writing isn’t romantic. It’s messy, scary stuff. Your career’s end lurks around every corner, in every mishap and distraction and tragedy that will undoubtedly appear as a pothole on the road to your success. There is no map, there is no certain route. Every path is grim and perilous, and more often than not it ends in a cul-de-sac of failure. It’s good to be worried. It’s good to be afraid. But always remember Tomahawk’s wonderful song, “God hates a coward.” Master your misgivings and you might just do okay.
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Excellent blog post, Rob.
Really, really well done. You know why I always had deadline trouble for writing? I had no fear. Now, for layout? There’s where the beast emerges for me.
Booze? Death metal? Self-effacing honesty? Love of D&D and writing, and an overwhelming fear of NOT creating? And a Tomahawk reference?!? It’s as if I wrote this myself and don’t remember it.
btw – for anyone unfamiliar with the reference, this “God Hates a Coward” video is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt856_nRxQk
Man, this is very good stuff–and a conversation I have had so many times with so many writers. Now imagine if you are working on a novel with no promise that there will be a paycheck at the end of the ordeal, no matter how good it is.
If you ever have the time, I suggest Frederick Busch’s “A Dangerous Profession” (http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Profession-Book-About-Writing/dp/0767903986/).
Keep up the good work, man!
The fear. Ah, yes, the fear. Yours is a good fear, a beast on the heels. Mine keeps me from writing, for fear that this is the project where I will be found out, where someone will look at my writing and declare me not a writer or not fit to be read. Mine is a stifling, smothering fear. I long for your fear.
Actually, that’s not fair. I think we’re undervaluing your discipline here. You may be motivated by fear, but you’re also girded by discipline, and that is a vital component of your success. You’re also excellent and—tricky, this part—not defeated by your fears. You play through it. I think that’s your secret. Otherwise it’s like saying that the secret to Batman’s success is his angry grief. But that’s just his motivation. The secret to his success is that he has the discipline and the verve to harness it, to play through it.
In this, you are Batman. Fucking Batman.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gato, CH News Robot and Wolfgang Baur, Steve Kenson. Steve Kenson said: RT @rdonoghue: Robert Schwalb's post on freelancing and fear just got him a place in my feedreader. http://bit.ly/cIfy9E [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Iron Regime, Iron Regime, Fred Hurley, Fred Hurley, tracy and others. tracy said: A great post by @rjschwalb on what drives him. http://bit.ly/aG1BAE Many of the same fears haunt my dreams but I push myself to continue. [...]
Man.
That’s exactly how it is.
At the risk of being blunt…more writers (freelance and otherwise) should have your kind of fear. Scary, but true.
(They should also have more of your kind of talent, but that’s another column.)
Aw shucks you guys. You make a kid blush.
Awesome post Rob. I got that too. It drives my throughput (although not to your Epic level if the reports I hear are true). I used to call that fear “professionalism” but I think there’s also a healthy dose of the impostor’s syndrome.
We need to talk about these inner demons more. Heaven knows that creative writers are known for being batshit insane.
Wanna join Asylum Dungeon Press?
A very entertaining read, Rob. Per your standard operating procedure, well done.
Sobering (to say the least) for the aspiring freelancer perhaps, but nicely put regardless.
Now if I can just come up with some sufficiently awesome ideas for pitches….
You DO put out some great work though, for which MANY of us are uber glad!!!
Exactly. Well said, man. Like our colleagues above me have said, this article sounds like something I wrote. It’s certainly something that gnaws away at me at all hours.
[...] life of a freelancer RT @rjschwalb: Please check out my new blog post here: http://www.robertjschwalb.com/2010/08/god-hates-a-coward/ [...]
Good article. Good site. I e-mailed this one.