We have many different names for the fear that comes along with creative pursuits. Sometimes we call it “Imposter Syndrome.” Sometimes we call it “Resistance” (because, I think, sometimes we hit writer’s block because we’re listening to fear). Sometimes we call it “The Inner Critic.” But no matter what we call it, the effect it has is the same: it’s Snow White’s poisoned apple, that creates a paralyzing slowness that congeals until it looks like death.

Fear and I have a long-standing relationship, and I know its voice all too well. “Don’t do that,” Fear says, always. “It might turn out badly.” The thing is, though, that Fear is actually a terrible predictor of the future. Its crystal ball is totally occluded. But its insufficiencies don’t stop it from trying to get in the way anyhow.

I have been fighting a Jacob-wrestling-the-angel level battle with Fear for as long as I can remember. But this past year, it started showing up with a vengeance in my creative life. Perhaps it’s because I decided to take a chance on something new – two projects that pushed me so far outside the bounds of what I thought I was capable of executing that, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I experienced a total creative paralysis.

Enter Elizabeth Gilbert’s beautiful book, Big Magic: Creativity Beyond Fear. If you are at all interested in pursuing a creative life, I feel this book should be on the required reading list (and, as a bonus, get the audiobook version. She has an incredible reading voice!) In this article, I’ll share some of Liz Gilbert’s incredible insights and how they’re helping me reframe everything I thought I understood about creativity and fear.

1. “Fear is Boring.”

Before my fellow horror writers come after me, let me explain what she means. In the first part of the book, Gilbert reflects on her own childhood experiences with fear and anxiety – a section that resonated very close to home for me. Gilbert spent much of her childhood paralyzed by fear, as did I. But at a certain point, she realized that Fear has only one word in its vocabulary, and that it says it universally, whether you are a human or a tadpole: “Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.” Fear might be necessary to our survival on a basic level, but, as Gilbert says, it’s generally predictable and utterly unoriginal.

I think we feel fear when we begin a new creative work because it’s a step into the unknown. On our most basic, primitive level, we aren’t programmed to appreciate things that have unpredictable outcomes. Dark caves, for instance. Something is probably in there that will eat you, and we’re hardwired to avoid things that endanger our survival.

“Fine,” you say, “but I’m not going into a bear’s den. I’m just opening Final Draft.”

Yes. Exactly right. Our lizard brain should not take exception to Final Draft. But the truth is that when we decide to write a story, or make a movie, or compose a song, we’re making ourselves vulnerable – literally, “woundable” – and we’re really not sure how it will all turn out.

Cue Fear and its one-note song.

Gilbert makes an excellent distinction in the book between courage and fearlessness. Courage doesn’t mean that we have no fear at all. It means that we act in spite of our fear. She describes a wonderful exercise she goes through each time she begins a new creative project. She acknowledges Fear, recognizes that it will join her and creativity for the journey, but tells it that it, under no circumstances, is allowed to get behind the wheel and drive.

I love this exercise. I’m working on recalibrating the balance between Fear and creativity, and this exercise helped me realize that the goal isn’t to kick Fear out. This really isn’t possible. Instead, it’s about learning how to accept that Fear will pipe up at every turn, throwing up roadblocks to our progress, and trying, at all costs, to keep us safely ensconced in the womb of our comfort zone. And it’s also about learning how not to listen.

So let’s take a cue from Elizabeth Gilbert and invite Fear to sit in the backseat the next time we embark on an adventure with Creativity. Give it a juice box and some Goldfish, but don’t, under any circumstances, give it the map.

2. “Done is Better than Perfect.”

This is a hard teaching, but infinitely valuable, I think. It requires us to define our terms “done” and “perfect” very carefully. When you hear creative people bemoaning the fact that “the work is never really finished,” they’re referring to the illusion of perfection. And they’re right. If you approach your work with the expectation that your work has to be perfect before it can be seen, it will never be done. You can revise, revise, revise, revise – endlessly, around and around. It will never be perfect. And I truly mean never. There will always be a tweak to make here and fiddling to do there. And every time you come back to the project, you’ll see its flaws.

If you want a harrowing tale about the cost of perfectionism, check out the short story “The Birthmark,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (of Scarlet Letter fame). In the story, a young man marries the woman of his dreams, and their happy love is destroyed by the young man’s obsessive fixation with the birthmark on the wife’s cheek. The obsession consumes him, and he becomes desperate to find a way to rid her of this blemish. He tries everything…and ultimately ends up killing her.

The lesson is pretty clear. We can focus so much on what’s wrong with our work that we block out everything else. We can obsessively pick at our project so that the inevitable conclusion gets perpetually postponed. We say it’s not done because, deep down, we’re afraid of the Unknown Outcome.

Elizabeth Gilbert says that perfectionism is nothing more than Fear parading around in high heels. It’s dressed up to look sophisticated and important, but it’s really nothing more than Imposter Syndrome. And the effect on our creativity is the same: it’s ultimately deadly.

Perfectionism stops us from declaring the work finished. It stops us from sharing our work with the world. And, worst of all, it stops us from moving on to the next project. So finish the work – and then let it go.

3. “Does It Love You?”

We don’t often consider our relationship to our work as one of mutual, even impassioned, attraction. But Elizabeth Gilbert invites us to do just this. In the chapter titled “Does It Love You?”, she considers the ways in which we often talk about creative work as a battle and a total beat-down, as if Creativity were the cruelest romantic partner imaginable. We often characterize Creativity as fickle, whimsical, demanding, and utterly unpredictable – a force that consumes rather than nourishes, and which makes us suffer rather than gifts us with joy. If that’s the case, I think, perhaps it’s no wonder that Fear can get the better of us.

There’s another way to think about it, Gilbert suggests. What if we considered that Creativity loves us just as much as we love it? What if we made a choice to follow its path with what she calls “stubborn gladness”? This is the joy in the work that persists whether we’re being acknowledged for the work or not and whether we feel the work is going well or not. It perseveres through it all.

I love the phrase “stubborn gladness.” And I also love the thought that we are collaborators and partners with our creativity, not frenemies or downright antagonists. Love is the antidote to fear – to quote Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116: Love “looks on tempests and is never shaken.” Our love for the work sustains us through the ups and downs that are a natural part of this life we’ve chosen. And because love brings trust, I now repeat my favorite mantra (“trust emergence”) with new sincerity. I can trust the process. When I look back, I see that it has never let me down. But perhaps I let my creativity down when I choose to listen to Fear over the reassurance that inspiration is always close by, and that, somehow, this is a story I’m meant to tell.

I’m done letting my creativity down. I’m done letting Fear into the driver’s seat, because it always wants to go to the same place: right straight back home, to sit idling in the driveway. I’m choosing the Big Magic instead: the magic of inspiration, of love, of trust, and of stubborn gladness.

Are you coming with me?