Is Fear Getting in Your Way?

Recently, a client who is working through the stages of my Find Me an Agent Match, Please service shared that fear gets in her way of submitting. When we discussed it further, she and I were both surprised to learn she did not have a fear of failure; she had a fear of success. It took some time to peel back the layers of this fear but she was open to learning why she, a grammarian at heart, sent out query letters with glaring sentence construction mistakes and obvious typos. She had even made the unforgivable error of addressing a query to "Mr. X" when it was directed to "Ms. X." 

Although her projects were ready for submission, she wasn't. 

When I asked her what success looked like to her, she described a fairly dramatic scenario where she'd be on the road most of the time promoting at book fairs and presenting at book signings and school visits. Although this was exciting, it was daunting because she is a single mom of two children and because public speaking gave her the heebie-jeebies. We discussed how this scenario might actually play out. She realized she could say yes to people who had offered to help. She could find a balance between home and book life. And, she could send out submissions that reflected her years of work, talent, and her promise as an author. 

Is fear of success -- or failure -- getting in your way? Take some reflection time and see if you can let it go. ​Your future is waiting.