The combination of awareness (that is, non-judgmental seeing), kaizen, and gamification, which make up Self-Gamification, can help us to master fear in a light and enjoyable way — in a gameful way.
A quick reminder. This gameful way doesn’t mean that you need to be in denial and overly cheerful.
We’ve all got upset or even angry at least once in our lives if we didn’t win a game or didn’t reach a level we wanted, or bumped into a wall in a car racing game. The difference between real-life projects and games is that, in games, we don’t stay upset for too long. If we observe that we are, then we stop playing the game. To continue playing, we need to put the upset aside and focus our attention on the next move in the game. Or on another game. In a real-life situation, we can do the same: acknowledge the upset and move on.
Beginning something new can be both daunting and exciting. We, authors, face the beginnings with each new empty page.
Finishing one page might be super exciting, but suddenly we meet the start of another, empty one.
We all might have heard the brilliant wisdom by Nora Roberts and other prolific authors, “You can’t edit a blank page.” But how do we start filling in those blanks?
Any creative excitement can flip quickly into nervousness and even despair, especially when we love what we do — the bigger the wish, the bigger both the excitement and fear of both succeeding and failing.
Cheerleaders remind sports teams of excitement. They help the athletes to “reframe” nervousness into something positive and fun. They remind them and the audience that something big and amazing is about to happen.
The stories writers create are big and amazing too! Each of them is unique, be it one of fiction or true events.
Thus, we, writers, need cheerleaders too.
We can be our own cheerleaders, and there are many great tips on how to do it. My favorite approach is to turn life into fun games.
But sometimes we also need cheerleaders from outside. Our family, friends, fellow writers, agents, publishers — they all have the ability to be such cheerleaders too.
And I have one in the form of a little book for you. Its title is Cheerleading for Writers. I am thrilled that it has helped many authors on the way and that some acclaimed and even a New York Times bestselling author have appreciated it so much that they wrote a review.
I invite you to read this little book and get powered up in your epic creative writing journey.
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Where you can find this cheerleader
To take a look at the Cheerleading for Writers, read its reviews, and buy it on Amazon, click on its title above or the image below:
If you want to see where else you can buy it, then go to the book’s page on this website here.
Alternatively, you can subscribe to my page, Optimist Writer, on ko-fi for $5 a month, and besides supporting what I do, you will also get access to all my motivational books, which I share there once a month or each time a book is out. Right now, you can get access to four of my books there — one upon subscription or one-time support, and three in the posts solely for subscribers. Cheerleading for Writers will be added later this year or upon explicit request from subscribers.
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Enjoy being cheered and feeding your hungry pages! 😀
