On Anxiety, Captain America, and Learning to Say Shush

If you've spent any time at all on my Tumblr or Twitter feeds you know I'm pretty fond of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (read: deeply fucking obsessed). I like most of the actors, but lately Chris Evans has managed to nudge Mark Ruffalo aside in order to ascend to the position of my number one favorite. This is due in no small part to his increasingly obvious struggles to deal with the pressures of celebrity.

He's mentioned in a few interviews that he has anxiety about press tours and publicity appearances. He originally turned down Captain America because he was afraid of the enormity of a six-picture commitment and the ways in which a role that big would turn his life upside down. He's admitted that he talked the decision over with his therapist before finally saying yes. And every time a new Marvel movie comes out and the publicity machine trots out the dog-and-pony show you can see in his frozen smiles and his glassy, deer-in-the-headlights eyes that he is genuinely uncomfortable with all that attention.

(Gifs by http://chrisevanssource.tumblr.com/post/92980598499)

People are always comparing Robert Downey Jr. to his Marvel character, Tony Stark, given the shared history of substance abuse, manic charm, and propensity for flamboyant behavior. But whenever I see Chris Evans step out in front of a crowd of reporters or cheering fans, and I watch him doing best to smile and pretend he's having a good time, all I can think of is Steve Rogers sadly drawing that picture of a dancing monkey after one of his USO shows.

This is all relevant to me because I also struggle with anxiety. Part of the reason I chose to write novels is because it is a profession that affords the luxury of spending a lot of time alone in front of a computer, rather than interacting with other human people, which is not something I feel like I'm very good at.

Writing is my escape from the persistent din of worry that's always there, needling at the edges of my brain. When I'm absorbed in a story everything else fades to white noise in the background and I don't have to think about all the financial problems and family drama and health woes and personal failings that threaten to keep me up at night. I can shed the myriad inadequacies of my real self and live happily inside this imaginary world I've created inside my head.

I spent enough time doing high school theater (in fact I lettered in theater, which is only slightly less nerdy than lettering in chess) to suspect this same freedom from self is probably what drew Chris Evans to an acting career in the first place. It's one thing to put on a costume and assume a role and express words and emotions dictated by someone else, and a whole other manner of terrifying to step out in front of a crowd of people who want you to be yourself, which is pretty much the scariest thing you can possibly ask of someone like me.

Here's the thing about being a novelist, though. It's all well and good when you're just sitting at home typing words on a screen. But then one day you've got to send those words out into the world and listen to all sorts of people tell you the myriad ways your words are inadequate. And only after you've been through that hell, and only if you're really, really good at it, and really, really lucky, you might actually get published. Which is when the genuinely scary part begins.

Because then suddenly you're expected to go out there and publicize yourself. They're going to send you to release parties and book signings. You're going to have to stand up in front of people and read excerpts from your own writing, and speak on panels at cons with writers who are better and more successful than you, and make small talk with industry professionals, and interact with fans who've waited in line just for those precious few seconds of your time which is A LOT OF GODDAMN PRESSURE. I have been one of those fans waiting in a line and I know how important it is to them and how can I possibly live up to that kind of expectation?

And maybe that all doesn't sound so bad to you because you're a Robert Downey Jr. type and you thrive on that kind of attention. If so, good for you. But maybe, like me, you're a Chris Evans at heart and the idea of doing all of that SCARES THE EVERLIVING SHIT OUT OF YOU. Well, guess what, buttercup? Too damn bad. Do it anyway.

Because here's the thing: just because something scares you doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. More importantly, it doesn't mean you can't do it. Like almost everything in life, the more you do it, the more you can do it. In fact, you can do pretty much anything you set your mind to if you want it bad enough. And you want this, don't you? If you want it bad enough to put in the hours it takes to get good at writing and come up with an outline and write a whole novel all on your own and set yourself up for rejection by sending out queries, then I'd say you want it pretty bad. 

There are going to be millions of little moments along the way when it's going to feel like you should just give up. Your brain is going to try to talk you out of doing this because it's hard or because it's scary or because you might fail. You need to tell your brain to shut the fuck up.

Don't want to listen to me? Then maybe you'll listen to Chris Evans, who is much prettier and more charming than me:

When he talks about "brain noise" he's talking about anxiety. Because that's what anxiety is—a feedback loop inside your head that you can't turn off. Learning to tune it out is the key to coping with anxiety. Saying "shhhh" to my fears is something I battle with on a daily basis.

Chris Evans understands. Chris Evans wants us to go out there and pursue our passions anyway.

Chris Evans says: “Do the things that scare you the most.” Which is exactly the advice I'd give to twelve-year-old me if I could go back in time.

Don't let your fears stop you from going after the things you want. Don't let all that noise in your head talk you out of greatness. Don't hide from the world. TAKE IT BY STORM, GODDAMMIT. The things that are most worth doing are almost always going to be the things that scare you the most.

Don't be the person who passes up the chance to be Captain America and ends up wondering what their life could have been like. BE GODDAMN CAPTAIN AMERICA. Always. Every day. In everything you do.


(Author's Note: I couldn't find the original source for those Captain America gifs above, so if they're yours or you know who made them, please let me know. I'd really like to give you credit.)

A Little Peace and Quiet

What do you listen to when you write?

There are people who write best in public places like coffee shops. They thrive on the buzz of activity around them. There’s even an app that recreates the sounds of a coffee shop for you when you can't actually get to one.

I’d love to be one of those people sitting in a hip neighborhood coffee shop bent over my MacBook, pouring out my genius on the page. Those people always seem so cool. Unfortunately, I am not ever going to be one of those cool coffee shop writing people. I’m too much of a people watcher. I have to look up every time someone walks by or comes in the door or orders a mocha latte. I have to eavesdrop on the conversations around—I am literally physically incapable of tuning out these conversations when I'm alone and supposed to be working. This is not a situation conducive to productivity.

A lot of people write to music, and can be very particular about what music they listen to for each project. Sometimes authors will even provide a list of the songs they listened to while they were writing a book. 

I’d like to be that kind of writer. I used to be that kind of writer, actually. I used to compile playlists to match the tone of the whatever I was writing and listen to them on repeat while I was working. 

And then somewhere along the way I had to switch from vocal tracks to instrumental music, because the lyrics became too distracting. So I rediscovered a lot of classical music I hadn’t listened to since childhood (my parents were both big classical music fans) and I downloaded a lot of film scores. I loooove film scores. They’re all about mood, and if they’re from a movie you enjoyed they can provoke intense emotions and sense memories. Sometimes I watch movie trailers just for the music.

But at some point even instrumental music became too distracting for me. It pulled me out of the world in my head and dragged me back into the real world around me. 

So I had to start writing in silence. Which would be fine, if it wasn’t for leaf blowers and power washers and pugs who snore like a rutting javelina and pit bulls who have panic attacks at the first hint of thunder and sit on my foot panting at one hundred rpms. Did I mention I live in a city where we have almost daily thunderstorms? 

Beans would like it very much if we could move to a desert please and thank you.

So, yeah. Silence is not always so easy to achieve.

I tried earplugs, which I have often used for sleeping with great success. The problem with earplugs, though, is that while they dampen external noise, they tend to amplify internal noise. Every time you swallow, every time you click your teeth together, every time you move your neck, it's like it's being broadcast over a sound system at top volume. It’s both distracting and a little bit horrifying.

And then I discovered the miracle of white noise. It’s soothing. It’s unobtrusive. It drowns out everything that’s not inside my brain just enough that I can lose myself in my own thoughts for hours at a time. Hallelujah! 

It’s probably doubled my productivity. No lie.

There are lots of options in the white noise game. Expensive machines and fancy web sites. Personally, I use a dandy little iPhone app called Simply Noise. It’s always with me and it gets the job done. 

Now if only if only there was an app that could do something about dog farts ...

And so it begins ...

I took the name of this blog from a line in Franz Kafva’s diaries. Have you ever read Kafva’s diaries? I wholeheartedly recommend it. They’re hilarious. And beautiful. And kind of terrifying. Don’t read too much in one sitting, or you might get infected by the breathtaking depths of his melancholy.

In small doses, I find them intensely comforting. I mean, just listen to this:

JANUARY 20: The end of writing. When will it take me up again?

JANUARY 29: Again tried to write, virtually useless.

JANUARY 30: The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.

FEBRUARY 7: Complete standstill. Unending torments.

Magnificent, isn’t it? Who among us hasn’t been there, right? And they just go on and on like this. I like to turn to a random page and read a few lines whenever I need a quick pick-me-up. Hey, I think to myself, at least I’m doing better than this dude.

The other part of this blog’s title up there, “A Writer’s Blog,” makes me feel kind of weird. It’s still hard for me to identify myself as a writer. There’s a big part of me feels like you shouldn’t get to use that word about yourself until you’ve actually been published. Which is dumb.

Money is not what makes an artist or craftsperson authentic. For instance, I like to knit. I have knit many things. I am a knitter, despite the fact that I’ve never sold my knitting for profit. No one would argue with this. So this idea that in order to call yourself a writer you have to have sold a piece of writing for publication is ridiculous. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Besides, with the accessibility of self-publishing these days, basically anyone can publish any random collection of words and make a few dollars off of it. This guy got to No. 9 on Amazon’s bestseller charts with a book that was literally the word “fart” repeated 100,000 times. The internet is a capricious mistress, my friends.

Also, I have in fact been paid for my writing before. Back when I worked in public relations and advertising I wrote articles on Olympic-style boxers and ad copy on that super-cool new PowerBook featured in Mission: Impossible, and that writing was published in trade journals and newspapers and national magazines. So. I am a writer.

As of recently, I am also a novelist. My first completed novel has just gone out to my trusted readers, and now here I sit, waiting for comments and feedback. Trying not to agonize over the fact that people I love are, at this very moment, judging and criticizing this precious thing that I have been slaving over for the last few years of my life. (I said I was a writer, never said I was a fast writer.)

I think I’ll go read a couple pages of Kafka’s diaries to make myself feel better …