Thank you, Gabbar Singh

Issue #113: Overcoming Fear, Phantoms of Fear, and Fears That Must Not Be Named

Hello ji,

I interrupt our regular programming for this happy announcement: I have finally overcome the imposter syndrome holding me back from calling myself a Writing Teacher.

Or Writing Coach? Trainer? Facilitator?

Whatever is considered most respectable in your parts of the internet - I am that!

Naturally, as I give myself this award, I demand an acceptance speech.

I want to thank the inspiration behind it all:

Gabbar Singh.

No.

I should explain.

I spent many decades as an aspiring writer before coming to your inboxes and allowing myself to call myself a writer.

In those decades, whenever I was faced with a blank Word document, my imagination only ran as far as the refrigerator or the television - two inventions I am convinced were built to thwart creativity.

Of course, that never stopped me from daydreaming about writing the next New York Times #1 Bestseller.

Since I wasn’t actually writing, I did the next best thing any responsible future bestselling author would do.

I became a serial writing course attendee.

Today, every time I sit down to design new workshops for my course, I think back to the lessons I learned from all those courses I attended.

I try to do what I found truly helpful there. And I steer clear of things that taught me nothing – or even, at times, felt like a complete waste of my time and money.

And I have seen the gamut, believe you me:

• I have seen trainers who look more at the clock than at any student.

• I have seen trainers who put quotes from famous writers on a PPT and call it a course.

• I have also seen many well-meaning trainers watch helplessly - as students who never intend to write a word take over their entire workshop and turn it into their own personal therapy session with a captive audience.

  (If you have never been forced to listen to an utterly boring person talk about every banal thing that ever happened in their uneventful life for 20mins straight, DM me and I will recommend the right ‘writing class’ for you.)

And then - there have been some truly life-changing writing workshops that I have had the privilege of attending.

I found that these were always the ones where I *gasp* did some real writing!

Someone once told me,

“Writing is the only profession where most people who claim to be it, don’t actually do it”.

I think it is safe to say that the biggest challenge most writers - or my fellow imposters, the aspiring writers - face is that they do not write.

Why don’t writers write?

People have written entire books with the long answer to this question.

But the short answer is one word – Fear.

“Everything worth writing has been written before, by someone more talented than me. What if I have nothing new to write about?”

“What if I write, but no one publishes my work?”

“What if someone publishes my work, but then no one reads it?”

“What if everyone reads my work, and they think it is the worst thing written since Sallu bhai wrote the Selfish song in Race 3?”

And on and on it goes.

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Since I teach a storytelling course, my best advice for such writers is…

A story about fear.

Once upon a time, my four-year-old was afraid of a scary lion in a storybook.

Each time he read that book, he would start crying when he turned to the page with the lion.

So, we started keeping the book out of his reach. When he asked for it, we would tell him to avoid it because the lion scares him.

A few months later, he was reading another book. This one was about managing our feelings.

He showed me a page about fear, that said, ‘When you are scared of something, point at the scary thing and laugh.’

He asked if we could read the lion book again.

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Today, it is one of his favourite books.

I am not saying that he overcame his fear of the lion magically. He still feels that fear sometimes.

When he does, he comes to me and tells me the lion is scaring him again.

Then we both sit down with that page open, point at the lion and laugh as loud as we can. We laugh at his teeth. We laugh at his nose. We laugh at how he is actually just ink on a piece of paper, and not scary at all.

I claim no credit for any of this, but I am here to tell you - It works every time.

Within a minute, he tells me he can go back to reading the book again.

So yeah, he is still afraid of the lion.

But he has taught himself to read his favourite book despite his fear.

He Who Must Not Be Named is a fearsome dark wizard.

Tom is just a sad and lonely boy.

Naming a fear, and laughing in its face is the best way to break its grip over you.

If I had to summarize what this course will do for you, it would be this:

This course will not make your fears about writing magically disappear.

But it will help you write despite your fears.

If you like the sound of that, join the next batch.

I will sit with you and we will laugh at your lion together.

We start this Saturday.

Oh, and thank you, Gabbar Singh

❤️🦁❤️

Mahima