“Why Is This Fantastic News So Scary?”
An author receives a personal phone call from a publisher, who is excited about publishing a book he has written. The author is not thrilled, as would be expected. He is terrified, and doesn’t know why.
Published in Life As A Human.
Photo Credit:
“In Written Memories” Mutasim Billah @flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
Thoughts Along The Road to Healing 
I love your writing style. I wish you would have submitted something to the SteppersWisdom blog carnival… The deadline was today, but I would still accept something if you felt like submitting tomorrow. Anything to do with any twelve step program would work.
I do understand the fear of success. I’ve tried to explain it to others. It isn’t so much a fear of failure that keeps me putting off submitting my book to an agent, it’s fear of success – for so many reasons.
Shen – Wow, thank you for your wonderful and kind words about my writing style! I hadn’t heard about the SteppersWisdom blog carnival before! I’d love to submit something – let me see if I have something that would work! I have an old poem that comes to mind – from a treatment center newsletter, on working the steps! I could send that along.
Yes, fear of success doesn’t seem to get as much press, but it is huge anyway! That is the whole point of the article string I’m going to be putting on Life As A Human. It will be parts of my next book – where the fear of success and the writer’s block originated for me! It will be amazing! 🙂
Wow! I started ACA meetings in January 1989. Yours could have been one of the first books that I read about Adult Children of Alcoholics. From what you shared, I am assuming that it wasn’t published. What a shame. Fear can be so consuming. I know it was for me for a very long time. Sometimes, even now, it rears its ugly head.
Patricia – Yes, if I had followed through with Claudia Black, it would have been probably one of the first books about ACA from the viewpoint of a person who went through it. Later, I will talk about how I also heard back from Health Communications (Sharon Wegscheider Cruse) and they wanted it also. I’m going to be working through my next book on Life As A Human, and it will be pretty amazing. It will read like a mystery story – where did the writer’s block come from!
No, that book wasn’t published, but I have it on my “to-do” list to publish it at some future point. Yes, the fear reared it’s ugly head, and I discovered more – terror! That didn’t make sense for a long time, but by publishing “Freedom’s Just Another Word,” I worked through and released all of that. This next book will have more of the inner child work like I did in Freedom, only deeper. And “Independence Day” – why I was bulldozing Grandma’s house will be fully explained! It’s going to be fun to watch unfold!
Oh, and we just had a big thing happen for Dialogues With Dignity. We’re going to be doing a show Sept 1st called “Tools For Thriving” and we will have as a special guest Rebel Brown. An amazing woman, and has her own story to share!