April 10, 2025
All my life I’ve wanted to publish books.
When I went on a mission trip to Haiti as a youth, I filled a small spiral notebook with a line by line of the entire experience, the intended first draft of the book I planned to publish about it.
On family trips to the beach, I’d skip sandcastles and hole up with a laptop overlooking the ocean, pecking out paragraphs.
I’ve started multiple blogs, spent hours and hours writing, accumulated hundreds (thousands?) of pages.
Why didn’t I, until recently, take any discernible steps toward trying to get them published?
Over the years I’ve had plenty of answers to that question. Compared to using my gifts to ‘help’ or ‘serve,’ writing was a selfish indulgence, nothing the world needed. (Why did I think writing wasn’t a gift that could serve?) I didn’t know how to get started, how to package my writing, how to get people to pay attention. (Why didn’t I think I could learn?)
Five years of spiritual direction and its reflective fruit have helped me start revisiting these answers, questioning their truth, power, and value. As I’ve started to name and unwind my assumptions, I’ve recovered the underlying desire to share my writing with the world—and surfaced an underlying fear: as long as I don’t actually try, I haven’t been rejected. There’s still a hypothetical possibility that I could be a great writer. Try and fail, and possibility is foreclosed.
Except, I don’t really believe that, not once I pull it from my unconscious and examine it. More pressing, even if it eventually proved true, I don’t want to live a life driven by fear of failure, where I restrict my aim to things I’m certain I can do right away. Things that matter require risks, and there are things I want, like really doing this writing thing, more than I want to avoid failure. Like a lovestruck Lloyd Dobler lifting a boombox outside Court’s window, when you want something badly enough you’re willing to risk failure and foolishness for it.
Naming this fear, and the deeper desire, has had a major impact on my nascent writing career. I started this blog a few years ago to develop a regular discipline of putting (imperfect) work into the world. I left my job in part to create more space to take myself seriously. I began researching the opaque world of literary agents and publishing. I started crafting pieces for publication outside of my blog, and actually submitting them, with a goal of achieving a target number of rejections—a sign to myself that I’m trying. I’ve even signed with a wonderful literary agent who seems to get me and what I’m trying to say, and he’s shopping my book proposal as we speak (right, Don??!!).
For most of my life I had words. By acknowledging and facing my fear of failure, I now have several published articles, a literary agent and a book proposal. Success, right?
Care of Mind / Care of Spirit, by psychiatrist Dr. Gerald May (required reading for my spiritual director training program) portrays two sample dialogues, one between a therapist and patient, and one between spiritual director and directee, each featuring a similar dilemma to mind as a would-be writer: repeatedly not doing something you say you want to do. (Something you genuinely want to do, not just want to have done.) In part:
Patient: I tried to make some notes about my dreams . . . but I can’t seem to be able to do it. The strangest thing is happening . . . I forget to make any notes.
Therapist: So you really want to do it but you keep forgetting . . . Do you supposed there might be some reason for forgetting? Some resistance? . . .
***
Directee: Last month I was truly seeing myself as a child of God . . . But then it all just seemed to disappear.
Director: What is your prayer like now?
Directee: What prayer? . . . Every time I sit down to pray my mind is filled wiht all the other things I should be doing. Many days I don’t have time to pray at all . . . or at least I can’t seem to take the time.
Director: Well, if prayer is so unpleasant for you right now, it certainly makes sesne that you would not be so willing to take the time for it.
Directee: Yes, but I do still want to . . .
The conversations hone in on the way apparent forgetfulness or neglect regarding the stated goal, what is visible on the surface, stems from something hidden in the psyche or spirit: “unconscious resistances had been subverting conscious desires and intentions.” They’re illustrations of the impact of bringing the unconscious to the conscious—making visible unconscious fears, concerns can help us overcome the visible form of resistance.
Have you ever had an outstanding task on your to do list, remaining lonely and steadfast while you whiz by harder work? But look at that task, you’re paralyzed. “Schedule dentist appointment with new dentist,” mine might say, for weeks and weeks. I say I’m too busy, but seem to make time for “sort mail” “wipe of counters” and “watch sitcom.” Ok, those aren’t really on my to-do list, but you know.
When I allow myself to be honest about what’s actually going on, I notice that underlying the completion-resistant task is some kind of fear: of rejection, of being ‘found out,’ of looking stupid. Avoiding the task is the subconscious effort to protect us from what we’re afraid of. As Dr. May suggests, the very act of making the trade-off visible changes it: would I rather actually have a dentist appointment, even if the receptionist thinks I’m an idiot for not knowing how to properly assess if my insurance will be accepted, or would I rather not feel stupid but have rotting teeth? Pinpointing the vague fear of looking dumb or feeling rejected on the particular situation of a dental office receptionist robs it of some power.
I experienced this recently with writing again. After all the brave learning and hustle to find an agent and craft a book proposal, I’ve hit a dead end in the strangest place. For weeks I’ve been sitting on an email from my agent with a list of editors, asking me for thoughts on who to pursue. It’s been highlighted yellow, then red, on my to-do list, my conscious mind giving it increasing urgency. If this book is going to ever join your bookshelf, I need to reply.
But I haven’t. Why not?
Without considering the unconscious resistance, my menu of options in responding to this failure is limited: Try harder to remember. Put it in bigger font size in my to do list. Schedule a block to work on it. Think about it in the shower. Or, keep ignoring it and curl up in a defeatist ball, moan that it’s too hard. What business do I have trying to be a writer if I can’t even google a list of editors? The first is appealing because it feels like action and maintains an illusion of control—but the email still doesn’t get written. The second feels pathetic, but is often where I inadvertently land.
Per Dr. May, if I’m failing to get a task done that I want to complete on a conscious level, there’s probably an unconscious reason I’m avoiding it. What is the source of my resistance? Reflecting on this yields more than trying harder or giving up.
If you were in my shoes, you might have your own answer to the question (I’m curious to it!). For me, for so long the unconscious block has been fear of failure. What if I try to get some words out into the world and can’t get any traction? I finally got momentum when I clarified for myself that it would be OK to fail if I am writing as an offering of love. My job is to write and put it out there. I’m practicing letting go of what I get to see about the impact.
But now, as I have moved closer to this goal than I would have dreamed possible a year ago, I wonder if the fear has reversed.
Seth Godin says in This is Strategy, in Riff 33, “Hiding from a Useful Strategy:”
Once we clarify, simplify and commit, the useful strategy creates its own challenges.
What if it doesn’t work? If we make promises and lean into a path that requires emotional labor, time and effort, we’re responsible. On the hook and with nowhere to hide. And any project worth doing might not work.
Seth, we’re on the same page. I’ve grappled with this so much. My way out was framing my work as an offering of love. It might not succeed, in conventional terms anyway, but I think an offering of love is success in its own right, and trust in something bigger than me for that. So far so good.
But then he reverses the question:
And what if it does work? Are we willing to let go of our status quo enough to embrace the possibility that we might make an impact? Are we ready to become whoever we will be if the strategy succeeds?
I haven’t even dared to imagine what it would mean to succeed. At least not consciously. But unconsciously, a part of me has probably been on the case:
- What if I my book is published, and does well, and I become known—someone people make mean comments about or publicly dissect or doxx?
- What if I put myself out there am found wanting? What if I write a poorly-reviewed best-seller?
- What if I have to go on international book speaking tours and my kids grow up without me and my husband gets really annoyed with all the laundry he has to do?
- What if I become even more egotistical than I am already naturally inclined to be?
- What if I do well enough that I’m forced to consider pursuing this full time?
Once I’m prompted “what if is does work,” I can imagine a thousand possibilities, and to my surprise, there is pain and disaster lurking even in success.
What happens now? Having made the unconscious resistance conscious, what do I do with it? Try harder or defeatist avoidance are still on the table. But armed with a better idea of what’s driving it, I realize, like my probably irrational fear of dental receptionist rejection, I don’t want it to be. The fears may or may not be irrational, or likely to materialize. But even if they are, I don’t want to be bound by the fear of success any more than I do the fear of failure. The same truths that have helped me move forward to this point still apply. It’s still an offering of love, whatever comes of it.
This post isn’t perfect, but I need to stop writing here for the moment. I have an email to go answer…
