Spiders, Snakes, Public Speaking, and Not Querying Agents
By Anne Brown | October 15, 2021 |
A while ago, a writer friend of mine was talking about her first query letter. She’d let me read it and I thought it was well done. This wasn’t a surprise. She’d spent a lot of time on it, she’d researched, revised, and sent it out to critique partners for their honest opinions. It was at a place where further effort was just spinning her wheels, at least until agents started to weigh in.
But she was frozen in place, terrified to send it out. She admitted that even though she knew the query and the manuscript were both in excellent shape, she couldn’t pull the trigger. “What if they don’t like it? What if they don’t like…me?”
“They won’t,” I told her in my usual too-blunt way. “At least, most of them won’t. That’s just the way it works. But they don’t all have to like you. Only one has to like you.”
She laughed and said, “Can you imagine going out on stage in front of a large audience, singing a big emotional ballad that you wrote yourself, and when you’re done the audience is silent except for one person, slow clapping in the back row?”
She had a point.
It occurred to me that as writers, we really are true performers, and not so different than any other artist whose platform is a stage or a gallery wall. My friend couldn’t send out her query because she was suffering from good old-fashioned stage fright.
Based on my research, social anxiety and fear of public speaking/performance affect 22 million Americans and are two of the top-twelve most common phobias (along with fear of spiders, snakes, heights, flying, dogs, storms, needles/injections, germs, and both wide open and small spaces). These phobias are evolutionary and have been key to our survival—keeping us away from poisons or getting too close to a cliff edge and falling to our deaths. But now, with our day-to-day lives being lived in much safer environs, those evolutionary anxieties have less purpose while being no less present. Even when there’s no actual threat to our safety, our bodies often want to flee, or they just freeze up. Not surprisingly, these fears attack self-confidence and cause people to avoid stepping up to the podium even when doing so could lead to long-term success.
Getting back to my friend and her query letter, she’d admit that her stage fright comes from her need to be perfect and her fear that she never will be. Well (here’s me being blunt again), she’s right about that. She never will be perfect. None of us will. Check out this 1-star review for the King James Bible:
“I would have given it 5 stars if not for the 2 typographical errors that I’ve found (so far).”
For some, simply acknowledging that perfection is not attainable may be all it takes to gather the courage needed to put their writing out there for others to see, to judge, to love, or to hate.
But if that’s easier said than done for you, here are 6 techniques you can try to help you step out into the spotlight:
- Know your Purpose. Identify what you want to give the audience. Is it an emotional experience? Sheer entertainment? An escape from reality? A new perspective? Important data and information? Shifting the focus from yourself to your purpose may be just what the doctor ordered.
- Inhale… Exhale… Practice calming and relaxing yourself through yoga, meditation, and other deep-breathing exercises.
- Set a Timer. Give yourself a time limit for your nerves; literally set an egg timer. The more time you spend boiling in the pot, the harder it will be to send out your manuscript.
- Seek a Natural Chemical Rush. Go for a run or watch a stand-up comic on YouTube. Exercise and laughter both release endorphins, and endorphins attack anxiety.
- Visualize success. Focus on the positive comments you’ve received from critique partners, rather than on the fear of an agent’s rejection. I’m sure you’ve heard the anecdote about Harry Potter being rejected by 12 different publishers.
- Read bad reviews for successful books. Realizing that rejection is not a barrier to success can help alleviate fears about what might go wrong. Here’s what one reader had to say about Bridgerton, the first book in a mega-popular series that became one of the pandemic’s greatest Netflix successes: “Is the book good? No, not really. I mean it’s readable.” Here’s one for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road: “The writing was awful. The characters annoying. The plot line non-existent.” This is actually quite an entertaining exercise. Look up your favorite books!
So, how about you? Do you suffer from writer’s stage fright? Have you found any techniques that have helped you move beyond that paralyzing phobia? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
Anne Greenwood Brown got her start as a traditionally published author of young adult paranormal and contemporary romance. Currently, she is a USA Today bestselling author of adult paranormal and contemporary romance (both traditional and indie) under the pen name AS Green . For more information see the Contributor tab. You can also follow her on Facebook , Instagram , and TikTok .
Great suggestions, Anne!
I tend to embrace blissful ignorance. LOL. Pretend the negative Nellies don’t exist and move on.
I’ll share this wonderful post.
Hugs
Dee
I totally relate. After spending time working on a query and finally getting it ‘there’, I was seized by all kinds of terror, which, in the end, was a giant wad of mind-trash about my self worth. Unravelling that mess has made all the difference. Also, staying close to my writing community and talking about it there. But the thing that helps me the most is to remember what you said in your post. They don’t all have to love you. Just one does. Thank you, Anne.
I totally relate. After spending time working on a query and finally getting it ‘there’, I was seized by all kinds of terror, which, in the end, was a giant wad of mind-trash about my self worth. Unravelling that mess has made all the difference. Also, staying close to my writing community and talking about it there. But the thing that helps me the most is to remember what you said in your post. They don’t all have to love you. Just one does. Thank you for this, Anne.
Marvelous thoughts.
That conversation with your friend really does put it perfectly. Querying doesn’t need more than a tiny sliver of “Yes” among the “No”s, and yet we picture it as if we were facing down a random horde at a talent show. For a performer, making one true fan out of an iffy crowd might be a *good* day.
Most of selling a book is like that, and so is life. The “No”s simply can’t hurt us, except that we have to go a moment further for another chance at one of the “Yes”es we need to stack up. The pain starts when we forget how many chances the world still has for another “Yes,’ and when we start counting the “No”s.
Thank you for not leading with the picture of a spider. Given that I suffer from anxiety in general I’ve made a virtual career out of ways to counteract it. Your mention of watching standup is excellent. Basically, anything that redirects is helpful. Tastes vary, but video in general can be excellent. Concentrating on tasks can also help so long as they fully engage. Vacuuming is great for generating ideas, but bad for shedding anxious thoughts, for instance. Above all, though, are exercise, including yoga, and meditation.
Great suggestions! You’re not alone (obviously), and good lord, the idea of a spider photo just gave me a shiver.
I get those query e-mails. My agency receives perhaps 7500 of them a year. Maybe 10,000. That number, I’m sure, does not allay fears or calm perfectionism. It’s anxiety provoking.
However, I can tell you a couple of things…
First, good queries stand out. They really do. What stands out even more is effective writing in the sample pages–the first five–that we ask folks to include. I skip right to those and, trust me, I know immediately whether I’m in the hands of a skilled, confident storyteller.
Second, the numbers are misleading. The ratio of queries to offers of rep is something like one in a thousand. Yikes! Why bother, right? But wait…80% of those e-mails are from first-timers who just finished their first manuscript or completed NaNoWriMo.
The next 15% or so are from writers who’ve been working at their craft for a while. They’ve got more than one manuscript under their belts. They’re still not quite there, still learning, but you can see that they’re on the road.
It’s the last 5% that are exciting. Those are writers who are close. Now, for us, it is down to the factors that really make a match or not. Is the work publishable in an established category while at the same time bringing something original to it? Is there not only technical mastery but a voice, spirit, intention or purpose that lifts the project out of the pile?
And, of course, the intangible and unpredictable: does it speak to me? Do I personally relate? Can I envision how to pitch it? Can I see the publishing path? At this point, if I don’t then some other agent will.
Anxiety, perfectionism, defeatism, fear of rejection or criticism or humiliation or failure…all of those are understandable human feelings. But they are only feelings, which is to say they are not rational. No, they’re not. Sorry, they’re not. Rejection is nothing more than information. Silence is the same.
The message? Keep going.
From the horse’s mouth! : )
For me, getting feedback from colleagues/professionals first helps to quell the anxiety and also ensure a better submission.
In the third grade, I wrote a letter to the editor to Sports Illustrated magazine. I still remember the growing disappointment as week after week it wasn’t published. The more I though about it, the more humiliated I felt. I know: there are dozens of reasons a story might be rejected that have nothing to do with my value as a human being. Yet when I send out queries and manuscripts, I still have that lingering dread that I’ll look like a rank fool of an amateur, that some editor is looking at my submission and thinking, this poor kid thinks she’s good. It’s good to know I’m not the only one.
Oh, that must have hurt! For me it’s the 7th grade cheer leading results, posted on the wall for all to see, without my name on it. Every disappointment feels like a public humiliation, even when I’m the only one who knows about it.